


Borrowed Wings

by Feather Light (mgm024)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, BAMF Hermione Granger, Bisexuality, Depression, Hogwarts Sixth Year, Homophobia, Inner Dialogue, Internalized Homophobia, Multi, Ron is a homophobic dick, Rough Sex, Severus Snape Has a Heart, Severus Snape Needs a Hug, Sex, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Soul Bond, Soulmates, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, The entire Wizarding Britain are homophobic dicks actually, Vegetarians & Vegans, Violence, although we might not see it for some time, at some point, sorry about that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-01-31 03:09:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 22
Words: 46,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12667029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mgm024/pseuds/Feather%20Light
Summary: Hermione's sixth year begins with problems, stress and a war on the horizon. Oh, and visions. Let's not forget the visions. As she starts coming into her real powers, she discovers her soul mate, unexpected friends, an invisible guide and a destiny she never knew existed. She discovers that the more answers you get, the more questions spring up and you can never, ever be absolutely certain of anything.A story of adventure, courage, love and the ever changing threads of fate, that tie everything together.





	1. Lethargic

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, guys, here's how we stand. I'm writing this as I go along. Like, literally as I go along. If that's not your cup of tea... well. This is not a well thought out, perfectly planned piece of fanfiction. I do have a general idea of where I'm going with it... But we are flying by the seat of our pants here. The kind of flying where the compass is dead, the winds are strong and our destination really fucking far, but hey, we have a solid engine and enough fuel to get us there, all you have to do is hang on tight!
> 
> Unless life gets in the way, I will be updating pretty often. The chapters will be short, I'll warn you now, since I'll write whenever I have the time and just post as is. As you can imagine, with that kind of schedule, this story has no beta. Sorry about that. I do have spell check installed though and a firm grasp on my grammar. Maybe. Hopefully. Here's to making my English teachers proud! Haha! 
> 
> Yes, there will be smut. Yes, there will be a happy ending. There will also be copious amounts of angst, so be prepared.
> 
> When life do gets in the way and there's a pause in the updates, don't worry. I don't plan on abandoning this story.
> 
> ALSO - This takes place starting 2018, not in the nineties. So expect current references!
> 
> ALSO ALSO - This is a complete AU, I have limited time for research and I have read the books MANY years ago. If I deviate from the canon embarrassingly much, bear with me. I love you!

Much like the previous days, this one promised to stretch before her, arid and bland and unfocused. Hermione felt adrift, without purpose, her mind wondering and her thoughts disparate. She hadn't sent her sheets to be washed in three weeks. She was wearing her last pair of clean socks and she hadn't taken a shower since the previous morning. She hadn't washed her hair in a week. She should do things. She _had_ things to do. Important things even, not just the trivia of boarding school life and personal hygiene.

Maybe it was the weather… it was gloomy, dark and damp outside. Maybe that was the reason she had a headache and felt like she'd been run over by a train. Since the beginning of term... no, since the end of last year really, her energy levels had plummeted. She'd have a couple of good days, then a week of bad ones, then a couple of good days again. Predictably enough, the number of good ones kept getting smaller. 

She didn’t feel like going to breakfast. She couldn’t remember the last time she actually felt like she was hungry or in the mood for something to eat. And breakfast was the worst. She felt nauseated and bleary eyed and all she could keep down was a cup of coffee. 

“Hermione, are you awake?” Parvati asked from across the room.

She sighed. Of course she was awake. She’d been awake since four freaking thirty. It was the getting out of bed and actually doing things that was the monumental task. Like Sisyphus. Except instead of pushing the rock uphill she was just standing next to it at the foot of the mountain, contemplating failure. And she knew all the signs by heart by now, she did. She recognized them and acknowledged them, and she knew that the longer she let them fester, the worse it was going to get. But she just didn't have the energy to do anything about it. She remembered what her therapist had said. Start small. Set achievable goals. Establish a support system. Be proud of the progress you make, no matter how small. 

Being proud... She'd be hard pressed to find anything to be proud of lately.

Her alarm sounded next to her face and she looked at it dispassionately. She had forty-five minutes left until class and she needed to get dressed. She heard the door to their room open and close as the other girls went about their morning rituals. It took her another ten minutes just to convince herself to get out of bed.

The Great Hall was filled with chatter when she went in and she felt her headache getting worse.

“Good morning!”

On her less charitable days she wondered whether Ron could even distinguish between eating good food and being in a good mood.

“Good morning.” she answered.

“Morning, Hermione.” was Harry’s more sedate greeting.

Harry understood the darkness. He knew what it was like to be treated like an outsider, an anomaly, always _less than_ no matter how well you performed. But whereas Harry had left all that behind in Surrey, Hermione had discovered herself thrown head first into it at the tender age of eleven. It had been a grueling five years.

“What do you think the new Potions Professor will be like?” Seamus asked from a few seats away.

Harry made a disgusted noise.

“Well, at least he’s bound to be better than the last one...” he said with a grimace.

Harmione couldn’t help but agree. Severus Snape was most definitely _not_ the best teacher. She had no idea why the man had chosen a career that obviously gave him no joy and sucked the life out of him, but she wished he’d wake up and smell the defeat. For everyone’s sake.

Her first class was Charms, followed by Herbology. She felt mildly productive as she finished her Arithmancy homework for the next day in the 15 minute break they had before Defence Against the Dark Arts. After that she had a few hours off and then Mixed Martial Arts training. She’d started taking it two years before, when she realized that it was the only available PE class, apart from Quidditch or fencing or opting out altogether. She’d discovered a passion for it right from the start. There were little things as rewarding after a stressful day as punching a bag until you were sore. Not unexpectedly, she was the only girl there. This year they were going to learn Filipino knife techniques and she could actually muster a shred of excitement. Even when she had zero energy or felt like doing nothing else except lay in bed brooding, evening training sessions always made her feel better. It was the only bright spot in her days, sometimes. 

The news from outside were bleak. Terror attacks littered the pages of the Prophet, murders and hate crimes against Muggleborns happened almost weekly and Hermione was terrified of what it could mean for her parents. She knew for a fact that there were children of Death Eaters attending Hogwarts and that they hated her. Would they complain home about the Mudblood know-it-all with the Muggle parents who was best friends with the Chosen One? Would her parents be considered close enough to "The Golden Trio" to warrant a death sentence? Was the fact that they lived in Muggle London and the wards Hermione had set, enough protection? Had she performed them correctly? What if she’d fucked something up and they’d be discovered? It wasn’t like they were difficult to find. All you had to do was look them up on Google and their practice would show up.

She almost startled herself laughing. Wizards using Google! That was rich. They wouldn’t know what the Internet was if Hermione gave them a two hour presentation complete with color coded charts. The poor bastards. She wondered what they did for porn.

“Hey, 'Mione, you alright?” Ron asked.

“Sure.” she answered “Just a bit tired.”

They entered the DADA classroom and she remembered they had Snape teaching it this year. A small sliver of excitement penetrated the thick fog inside her head at the prospect of a nice training session, even if it was with Snape.

He made his entrance five seconds before the bell and she almost rolled her eyes right in his face. Could the man enter a single room without robes billowing and wind in his hair? And he always made this pause right after, like he was expecting applause or for them to have the time to take his presence in. She might have found it funny if she liked him more. She didn't.

“We will begin with a revision. I want to know what each of you knows and where we stand before even beginning this year’s curriculum.”

Which was Snape’s way of saying _I believe you’re all abysmal, but let me just make certain._

There were fifteen of them in total in the class and it took about ten minutes for Snape to get to where she and the boys were.

“Alright, ladies first, Miss Granger.” he drawled in a bored tone “I’d like you to disarm and incapacitate me, if you please.”

He took a relaxed dueling stance and she had a second to determine what to do. He was expecting her to use Expeliarmus, she was sure of it. But this was Snape, he was so well versed in countering that spell, he was practically immune to it. So she decided to use one of the tactics she’d elaborated herself. Simple, hopefully unexpected, and effective.

 _Funem_! She cast non-verbally. It was a simple little charm, used to create an invisible rope that tied around whatever you cast it towards and pull with as much strength as you put behind it. She concentrated it on Snape’s left ankle and had a moment to appreciate his bewilderment before he collapsed to the ground, backwards.

She swiftly cast a cushioning charm on the ground so he wouldn’t split his head open and then an _Incarcerous_ , just as he hit the floor.

“Expeliarmus!” she finally said out loud, in the stunned silence that enveloped the entire classroom. The sound of Snape’s wand hitting her hand was as loud as thunder and made everyone's eyes almost bulge out of their sockets.

 _Well_ , she thought. _That went well._

“Impressive, Miss Granger. If you’d be so kind as to let me up.” came Snape’s voice from the ground.

She released him, also non-verbally. He got up more gracefully than she would have expected and she held out his wand. He took it back with a piercing look.

“I see you’ve been practicing over the Summer” he told her.

She didn’t trust herself to do anything except nod. Coming from Snape, that was no small praise.

He went on to examine Ron and Harry and she did her best to hide her grin.

 

 


	2. Decisions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Btw, don't forget my taking liberties with the timeline, guys, as with a lot of other things, heh! So, for the record, this takes place in 2018, not the nineties. Smartphones and laptops and GPS and the whole deal. But everyone is their usual age. Enjoooy!

The sound of her alarm reverberated shrilly in the confines of her curtained bed and she woke up with a start. It was common courtesy, once you learned silencing charms, to use one around your bed so you wouldn’t disturb the whole room. Before she had a chance to think much of anything, Hermione opened her eyes and counted backwards to herself.

“5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”

She got up from the bed and stood next to it, exhausted and cranky. Why had she decided this was a good idea again? Oh, yes, because she’d read this book over the summer called The 5 Second Rule and she’d remembered about it late last night while brooding about her lack of motivation. Apparently, the reason you lack motivation to make changes in your life is fear of the unknown and the fact that the brain is in survival mode. Since the brain’s main job is to keep you safe and alive, it’s not going to drive you to do things it can't recognize, because they’re scary and possibly dangerous. Hence, lack of motivation.

Anyway, the point was to follow your first instinct and not allow your brain time to name all the reasons you shouldn’t do something. Hermione thought the lady who’d written the book would have made it brilliantly in Gryffindor. Act before you think was practically her House’s motto.

And why in the name of all that was holy had she set her alarm for 6 thirty in the goddam morning? Classes didn’t start till nine!

Oh, right. Stephen Gramonte.

Stephen was a fourth year Muggleborn Ravenclaw who just so happened to also be a computer wizz. He had a reputation in school for being able to hook any Muggleborn with a tablet or a laptop to the World Wide Web and Hermione… Hermione missed the internet like she was missing an arm and a leg. She’d set up a meeting with the boy for seven this morning, so she quickly dressed herself and got her laptop, which was disguised as a notebook, from her trunk. Getting a laptop into the school hadn’t been difficult at all.  While there were wards upon wards to alert for anything cursed of related to dark magic since Tom Riddle's diary incident, good old fashioned electric devices went completely unnoticed. Of course, you had to be very good at glamours in order to conceal them, since being seen with one would raise more questions that it was worth. Luckily for her, Hermione was.

She made it to the Ravenclaw Common Room just in time.

“Good morning.” she said good-naturedly.

“Hey, there!” answered Stephen. “This way.”

He led her through a corridor into a rather large supply closet.

“So.” he said “What do you need?”

“Twenty four hour web connection for my laptop, mobile internet for my phone and a way to charge them both.”

“Uh-huh. You don’t ask for much, do you?”

“I was led to believe you’re the best in school.”

“Ooooh, flattery! Nice. It’ll get you places.” he grinned “Of course I'm the best in school, do you have any idea the number of magical disturbances my servers have to go through just to get a decent signal, let alone a decent download speed?”

“Please don’t tell me you couldn’t find a way to create a Funnel Charm to link your servers to your routers, I’ll be severely disappointed.”

“Of course I used a Funnel Charm, what do you think I am, a fucking amateur?”

“Well, then, what’s the problem?”

“There’s no problem, I just wanted you to appreciate all the work I’ve put into this system.”

Hermione grinned.

“I do appreciate it, Stephen, just as I’d like you to appreciate my trust in your services. Are the connections secure?”

“Are they secu… Of course they’re bloody well secure!”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, I was just asking.”

“Anyway...” he groused “It’ll be two hundred quid for the chargers and the charm that goes with them and a hundred quid a month for the connections.”

“That steep, huh?”

“We’re in the middle of fucking Scotland, Granger. If it weren’t for my satellite connection you couldn’t even _get_ a bloody signal here, nevermind all the magical interference.”

“Right. And how do I pay you?”

“Transfer to my Paypal account. Let me see what I’m working with.” he said gesturing for her laptop and phone. She pulled them out of her bag and gave then to him."

“Nice, what’s the configuration?”

She told him and he whistled.

“Sweet. Yeah, those should work fine. Who made the glamours for them, they don’t even shimmer, no matter how fast I turn them or what angle I use to look.”

“I made them myself. You’re telling me your glamours shimmer? That’s a classic, newby  mistake, Stephen."

“Well, excuse the rest of us mortals...”

“Alright, here’s what. I fix your glamours for you and you knock my subscription to fifty quid a month?”

“Are you joking, that’s robbery!”

“Well, alright, but it’s not me who’s going to have to explain to Dumbledore what a laptop is... and what it does... and how it connects to...”

“Jesus, alright, fine! Fifty quid, but when they wear off, you apply them again, free of charge.”

“Deal.”

“You’re worse than the Slytherins, I swear to God.”

She left the Ravenclaw tower in a much better mood than she’d been in when she woke up.

The rest of the day passed by in a blur of classes and essays. Dinner came with an announcement from the Headmaster.

“I would like to remind everyone that the day after tomorrow we will be posting the available apprenticeships for this Summer. You will have until January the 1st to prepare your applications, upon which date they will be submitted for evaluation. Please also remember that, in order to keep the process as fair as possible, all applications must be accompanied by an Anonymity Charm, to be removed only after the selection is complete, so do practice. Thank you and good luck, everyone!”

“Who in their right mind would want to give up a perfectly good Summer in order to work?” asked Ron in bewilderment. Hermione rolled her eyes. Every year the apprenticeships were announced, he asked the same question. She even knew what he would say next. Looking at Harry, she mouthed Ron’s next words.

“It’s not even paid!”

They both burst out laughing, to Ron’s complete confusion.

“What? What’s so funny?”

They laughed even harder.

“I hate you both.”

“Well, I for one” Hermione said after she got herself under control “plan on applying this year.”

“Really?” asked Harry. “For which one?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ll tell you when I figure it out.”

The thing was, it wasn’t so much the apprenticeship that interested her, although it would be interesting for sure, as much as the possibility of living somewhere that wasn't her parents house for the three months. If what she had planned turned out well, it would be either an apprenticeship or living in a motel. Needless to say she didn’t relish the latter.

Well, she didn’t relish any part of her plan, but it was necessary. She’d thought about it from all angles, tried to find any other better alternative, but this had simply been the simplest and safest idea she could come up with. Which wasn’t to say it was easy. She would effectively be an orphan. Her parents wouldn’t remember anything about her, her entire existence with them would be erased for good. For them, it would be like she'd never been born. 

She would abandon them forever for a world where she was treated like a second class citizen and where at least a quarter of the people thought she was some kind of abomination.

Doubt and guilt gripped her heart, like they did every time she thought about it. She had no right to do this to them, especially without their consent and they would never give it. Which, of course, only made her feel worse. She was a firm believer in free will. She felt like she was planning a terrible form of abuse and still she couldn’t think of any other better solution. The war was approaching and she was in the front line. There was a very real possibility that she was going to die. And she had no way to effectively protect her parents. _They_ had absolutely no way to protect themselves and as long as they were tied to her and living in London, they were in mortal danger. They would never accept to move away if they knew the truth.

“I’m not really hungry anymore, I’m going to take a shower and hit the gym. I’ll see you two tomorrow.”

“Sure thing. Night, Hermione!” said Harry distractedly.

“Good night!” intoned Ron.

At least while training she could let go of all thoughts and simply concentrate on the here and now. It was almost a form of meditation, really. Step, jab, hook, uppercut. Repeat. Front kick, jab, hook, knee kick. Repeat. No time for difficult decisions, no time for second thoughts, no time for sadness or guilt or heartache. Just step, jab, hook, uppercut, repeat. Over and over again until all you could hear were your heartbeats and all you could feel was the blood running through your veins and the adrenaline coursing along with it. It would have to do for now.

 


	3. Questions

 

She was neck deep in a NASA blog post when Lavender walked into the room and perched on the side of her bed. Hermione hated it when people did that. Was it really so difficult to understand that when she was reading something, she liked to be left alone?

“You’re never going to believe what I just heard!” Lavender squilled.

She especially hated being interrupted with meaningless gossip. She tried very hard not to engage in the practice, which considering they were in a boarding school in the middle of the freaking mountains was a pretty big accomplishment. Gossip was the number one pastime this school seemed to have. Students and teachers alike.

“What.” she answered in her most uninviting tone.

“Camilla just heard from Tyler who just heard from Colbin, that Seamus was kissing a third year Hufflepuff in one of the second story broom closets! Can you believe it?”

She sighed. Even if he had, what the hell did it have to do with her? “Why are you telling me?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Hermione, because it’s a juicy bit of gossip and I thought you might enjoy hearing it?” Lavender rolled her eyes.

“Well. I’m busy. Sorry.” she said dismissively, looking back at her article. The Veggie plant growth team on the International Space Station had actually managed to grow three plant varieties in a controlled environment. They had successfully grown lettuce in fucking space. Lettuce! In space! Hermione definitely thought that was a great deal more interesting than who kissed who in the second story broom closet.

“God, you’re such a killjoy, ‘Mione...” Lavender complained walking to her bed and plopping on it unceremoniously.

That stung a bit. Hermione had never been the gossiping type. Or the partying type. Hell, she wasn't even the social type most days, which were all traits greatly admired by Gryffindors. She knew this. She was entirely too much of a nerd, she didn’t have enough friends, she was way too intense and serious for her age and she had no idea how to have what most other people seemed to consider fun. She was hopeless. She was well aware of every single one of her shortcomings, thank you, that didn’t mean she liked having her nose rubbed in them.

It was why she’d be seventeen shortly, fairly good looking and still completely single while locked away in a remote school with hundreds of hormonal teenagers. She’d actually _never_ _had_ a boyfriend _or_ a girlfriend, even though she wasn’t opposed to either of them! She found it acutely hilarious and ironic than her preferences ran as wide as preferences could run, and still she hadn't been as much as kissed in all her years in this school. And it wasn’t that she didn't find people attractive per say, she could certainly appreciate both the male and female bodies respectively, but bloody fucking hell, was it too much to ask for some decent conversation and some intellectual stimulation from time to time? And maybe some emotional maturity?

She sighed and closed her laptop. She had an evening class of Ancient Runes to get to and the prospect of the weekend to get used to. She had no idea what she was going to do with herself, but she expected a fair amount of work would be involved. She needed to research the possible side effects of Obliviation and also the legal and financial implications of becoming an adult. Come summer she would be all alone and more than likely broke. She wanted to speak to Dumbledore about a possible part time job once she turned seventeen in October. She had no idea whether the school permitted anything of the sort. If she was accepted and did well in her apprenticeship this summer, she would most likely be considered for a job, which was the whole point of taking an apprenticeship in the first place. And she would definitely need a job once school ended. Granted she was alive, of course. But making plans for an uncertain future was better than brooding about not having one at all, so she counted her thoughts as productive nonetheless. 

 

* * *

 

The weekend came with sharp winds, clouds and little chance of sunshine so her friends didn’t pester her incessantly when she announced she had work in the library. Harry and Ron had Quidditch practice on Saturday and a game on Sunday, which meant they’d have eyes and ears for little else.

Saturday night found her stiff and aching from too many hours on a chair, browsing books so she decided to call it a night. It was eight and she’d only managed to worry herself sick, reading about the possible brain damage a badly done Obliviation could cause, especially for a Muggle. She also found out that it was illegal to perform the spell unless the Statute of Secrecy had been breached and that the more one had to erase, the riskier the procedure. Hermione felt nauseated thinking that in trying to protect her parents, she might leave them in a permanent coma. It was a bloody nightmare.

She went to dinner and then spent a few hours desperately trying to fall asleep and only managing in giving herself a headache. A little after midnight she decided sleep was nowhere in sight and she’d go crazy is she spent even another minute in bed. She put on her robes, Dissilusioned herself and started the trek to The Atronomy Tower. Harry, Ron and herself had spent a good deal of last year covertly practicing a series of spells they thought would be necessary in protecting themselves. Ron had convinced the twins to help the three of them make a list of the most useful spells and give them pointers about achieving the best results. Privacy charms, Disillusionment and Concealment Spells, not to mention fighting spells. They weren’t Aurors by any stretch of the imagination, but they could hold their own in a fight now and wouldn't simply be cannon fodder.

The air in The Tower was frigid and she cast a warming charm around herself. She was leaning against a wall, away from the railing, taking in the night sky, when she heard the loud crack of a Portkey. She moved more into the shadows, startled, her wand at the ready. A dark, panting figure was standing not ten feet to her left, staggering slightly.

“Expecto Patronum.” the voice called weakly and Hermione recognized Snape’s voice with a jolt. A beautiful deer materialized in front of the man, illuminating his tired face and dirt streaked clothes. He looked soaked. “To Headmaster Dumbledore: I’m back. I’m fine but don’t expect me for breakfast in the morning.”

The deer took off towards the castle and Snape wobbled dangerously to the side, ready to collapse. His arm shot to the wall to steady him, where it left a muddy hand print as he slowly started going down the stairs, inside the castle. Hermione waited for a good ten minutes before going to the wall and looking closely at it.

“Lumos.” she whispered. She put her finger on the hand print and felt a shiver run down her spine as she recognized the sticky, familiar feel. It wasn’t mud at all.

It was blood.


	4. Doubts

                                                                   

"Snape is up to something." Hermione told Harry and Ron Sunday morning at breakfast.

"Not you too..." groaned Ron.

"Shut up, Ron." Harry said, pointing his finger at his best friend "So is Malfoy." he went on emphatically, turning towards her.

"Yeah?" she asked "What's Malfoy up to?"

"I don't know yet. How about Snape?"

"I don't know yet either."

They both looked knowingly at each other, nodded and went back to eating.

"You're both just bloody obsessed with worrying, that's what you are." groused Ron "Can't we please at least _try_ to have a nice, quiet year? A normal one like all the other students?" he pleaded.

"Ng." Harry grunted, his mouth full.

Hermione just shrugged.

"It's really not that difficult, see?" Ron kept on "You just complain about homework, play Quidditch, date a nice, hot girl... It's not advanced arithmancy..."

"Oh, you’re dating someone?" Hermione asked, curiosity peaked.

"What? Who said anything about me? I'm not dating anyone!"

He sounded entirely too defensive.

"He's keeping it close to his chest." Harry told her. "I'm not sure why..."

"Maybe she's a third year like Seamus's girlfriend." Hermione smirked.

"Eeewww, Hermione, don't be gross, I'm not into kissing thirteen year olds!"

"Or maybe she's a Slytherin." Harry said, ignoring Ron's sputtering.

"Wow, you think?"

"I mean what else could it be? Just look at him..."

"Yeah.." Hermione answered giving Ron and appraising look "...definitely a Slytherin...."

"I have to say, I'd never’ve believed it..." Harry shook his head.

"She's not a bloody Slytherin alright?!" Ron finally erupted indignantly.

"Oh, so you _are_ dating someone then." Hermione said slyly, taking a sip of her coffee.

"I... I... maybe... sort of... I don't know! I hate it when you two gang up on me!"

"Awww... don't worry Ronniekins... we won't tell." Harry said soothingly, patting him on the arm.

"You're both bloody awful, you know that?" Ron huffed getting up from the table.

"So sensitive..." Hermione said.

"I think he really likes her."

"Yeah?"

"I think so..."

Hermione was glad. At least one of them deserved some romance in their lives.

"So what makes you think Snape is up to something?" Harry asked her.

Hermione put up a discreet privacy shield around them that had Harry raising an eyebrow and giving her his full attention.

"I was in the Astronomy Tower late last night. I couldn't sleep. He came back from somewhere via Portkey, soaked in blood, sent a Patronus to Dumbledore not to wait for him at breakfast and left for the Dungeons."

"Wow." Harry said.

"I know..."

"I didn't even know Portkeys worked on school grounds... I thought we had wards against them."

"So did I. But apparently not against all of them."

"That's a bit risky."

"Yeah."

"And he was covered in blood?"

"Yes. And he was exhausted and panting."

"That's definitely suspicious."

"I know, right?"

"Ok, you keep an eye on Snape, I'll keep an eye on Malfoy."

"What did he do again?"

"I'm not sure yet, but he's being way sneakier than usual and much less confrontational. I can't really put my finger on it... He just looks very, very guilty about something..."

"Huh... Ok, I trust your instincts."

"Thanks, Hermione. That means a lot."

She smiled at him and squeezed his hand before getting up to go to the Library.

"Good luck at the game today!" she told him.

 

* * *

 

Obliviation was never going to work. As Hermione sat at the Library desk, dejectedly studying the text in front of her, she felt all hope of her plan succeeding vanish. It was the third book she’d found that specifically discouraged extensive Obliviation, especially in environments where little to no control could be exerted. In simple terms, she could erase her parent’s memories, certainly, but that would in no way affect all the other people who had ever known her. All their family friends, neighbors and acquaintances who were likely to ask about her. The emotional and psychological trauma her parents would be put through would be unfathomable. They would think they’ve gone mad if they even survived the whole process without brain damage. She felt tears prickling the corners of her eyes.

She put the books back, gathered her things and went to the dorm room. Pulling the curtains around her bed closed she sat in silence for the longest time thinking about her options. There really was only one viable one. She had to convince them to leave the country. And it had to happen as quickly as possible. The only way they would leave, though, would be with her. So she had to convince them they all had to leave the country together. She would presumably have to abandon school. And after settling them as far away from England as possible, she would Obliviate the reason for the move and plant the conviction that they had decided it was better for their careers. Utter rubbish, of course. They loved their careers in London. And she had to do it all while still being a student at Hogwarts, since she had no intention of actually abandoning school. She might have to leave the grounds on several occasions.

Would sneaking around really be feasible? She had a feeling that it wouldn’t. Too many variables. She would need help. But from who? McGonagall? Dumbledore? How much should she reveal? Would they think she’s overreacting? What if they told her to forget it, that it was entirely too dangerous? What if she confided in them and they thought it was completely unnecessary and over the top and would try to stop her? Them she’d have _no_ chance of putting her plan into action.

She could feel the tendrils of panic gather around her and she tried to breathe to disperse them. An anxiety attack was _not_ what she needed. She needed to plan. She needed to decide. She needed to pull herself together and just do what was necessary, dammit. She was good at this. She'd always been good at thinking ahead about all the possible outcomes and coming up with a plan. She was resourceful and she had to trust herself. There was no one else, after all. Harry and Ron would help and they were smart and brave, but they weren't very good at keeping a level head or sticking to a plan. They tended to bull through and hope for the best. And hope wasn't on Hermione's list of reliable resources at the moment.

 

 

 

 


	5. Suspicions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I know nothing about snakes. Expect inaccuracies on that front :))  
> Also, considering all the ways The Chamber of Secrets has been changed between the book, the movies and the games, I'm taking liberties with it too and adapting it to the story.

 

Snape’s hands had a slight tremor to them. Hermione might not even have noticed it if she hadn’t been watching him so closely. But whenever he extended his arm just so, demonstrating a wand movement, his hand would start shaking. Whatever had happened Saturday night, he still hadn’t recovered fully. As she continued to study him throughout the class, she noticed other things as well.

He favored his left leg slightly and his face was paler than usual. There were slight beads of sweat at his temples. The third button on his right sleeve was undone and one of his socks had a discreet silver line that the other one missed, which sugested they were from different pairs, despite both being black. It could of course be an accident, but Snape was so tightly put together as a rule, it just didn’t seem his type to casually wear mismatched socks. He’d also missed two perfectly good opportunities to scathingly comment on their technique. In other circumstances she might have believed he was just in a particularly good mood, but, looking at him closely, she got a feeling that he was instead exhausted and barely covering it. It peaked her curiosity something fierce.

Where had he been? Had that been his blood, someone else’s or both? Dumbledore seemed to be aware of his departure so did that mean Snape had been on a mission for him? Who or what had he fought so viciously? For all everyone's dislike of him, he was known as an excellent duelist. She'd heard stories. And he'd gotten the DADA position after all. Had he been attacked? Had he attacked someone? She had so many questions she knew wouldn’t be answered, and it was frustrating.

When dinner came Harry chose a seat across the table, while Ron sat next to her. She whispered in his ear.

“After dinner get Harry and meet me in Myrtle’s bathroom.”

“Uh-hum. Anything wrong?”

“I don’t know for sure. Just be there.”

“Alright, Merlin...” he said rolling his eyes. “Why can’t we all go together?”

“ _Because_ , Ron, I think it might be a bit suspicious if the three of us went into a girl’s lavatory together.” she answered “Make sure nobody sees you.”

“You’re taking this thing a bit far, don’t you think?” he whispered back.

She just ignored him and kept on eating. She didn’t think she was taking things too far at all, really. The sooner Ron realized how dangerous their situation really was, the better. She ate quickly and half way through dinner she got up and went to the dorm room to get changed into something more comfortable. If she was going to carry things to and fro she was going to need a bigger bag as well. Or something with an Undetectable Extension Charm on it. She’d read about those in Willington’s “Guide to Always Being Prepared for Anything” and it sounded promising. She put it on her mental to do list and headed for Myrtle’s Bathroom.

The boys took about fifteen minutes to arrive.

“What’s up?” Harry asked.

“I think we need some sort of headquarters where we can talk freely and also keep things that we don’t want to leave lying around the dorm.” she said, cutting right to the chase.

“And you think Moaning Myrtle’s Bathroom is a good choice?” Ron said looking around questioningly.

“Honestly, Ron, sometimes I wonder…” she began, pinching the bridge of her nose “… nevermind. No, of course not here. I was thinking about The Chamber.”

“That’s a great idea, actually.” Harry said.

“I hate that Chamber.” Ron groused.

“I don’t think any of us have the greatest memories of it.” said Harry and Ron gave him an apologetic look.

Hermione, for one, had never been to the Chamber so had no memories to speak of. It had just seemed like the logical choice. No one except for them and Dumbledore knew about it and there was no reason for him to be down there to begin with, it was completely secluded and, judging from the boys’ stories, large enough to be able to practice in as well. As long as they were careful about not being seen going in and out, they could have a very good place to hide in case anything happened. Not to mention they needed someplace to plan and be absolutely certain of not being overheard. Between the students, the teachers, the ghosts and the elfs, the castle had more ears than walls.

“Alright, so how do we get in?” Hermione said, getting excited the more she thought about it.

“Well, the entrance is through here” Harry said pointing at one of the sinks “And the incantation is spoken in Parseltongue.”

Both Hermione and Ron repeated the sounds until they had them well memorized. Then Harry cast the incantation and the sink opened up to reveal a corridor. It was long and damp and they had to cat Lumos to see where they were going. The entrance closed as soon as they were inside. After about five minutes of walking, the narrow passage opened up into a huge hall that had Hermione gaping.

“Bllody hell!” she said “It’s huge!”

She really hadn’t expected it to be so large. Human sized serpent heads were lining up the right and left walls and on the opposite end of the entrance, some five hundred meters away at least, was the large statue of Salazar Slytherin. They roamed around a bit, taking everything in. There was a slight greenish tint to everything, but it was otherwise pretty dark, so Hermione cast a few Wizard’s Lights that bobbed around them illuminating the space around. And that’s when she saw it.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” she exclaimed.

Ron looked at her, startled. He was not familiar with either her swearing or the expletive she had used. Harry just stepped up next to her and looked down at the huge serpent lying at the far end of the huge room.

“Yeah…” he said “That would be the Basilisk...”

“Why is it so well preserved?” she asked

There was no smell of rot and the blood looked fresh. The whole scene looked like it had just happened.

“I think the Chamber has inbuilt advanced Preservation Charms. How would it have survived down here to begin with, there was no way for it to get food or drink.”

“Right...” she said. She should have thought of that, of course. She was just too startled by the sheer… size of it to think clearly. It was enormous!

“Harry...” Hermione started and stopped. She didn’t even know what to say. She’d never actually had a clear image of what he’d been up against. But to see it like this… it was humbling and more than a little scary. She turned towards him and enveloped him in a hug. “I can’t believe you killed it with a sword!” she whispered “You could have died! Easily!”

He hugged her back and they just stood there for a while, until Ron cleared his throat.

“I was here too that night, in case you forgot...” he said.

She let go of Harry and gave Ron a hug as well. She could have lost both of them.

“I know, Ron. You were very brave as well.” she said.

 

* * *

 

They transfigured two desks, some chairs and a shelf from a few pencils Hermione had brought and created a sort of small office space a little ways off, between two serpent heads. Transfiguration wasn't the best solution, it would have to be re-applied constantly, but they had little choice. Hermione made a list of things they would need, including a few supplies for a small, impromptu Potions lab.

“Which reminds me...” she said, looking at Harry “You do know that the Basilisk is worth a fortune, right?”

“Uhmm… never thought of it, really. You think?”

“Harry...” she sighed exasperatedly “The venom from the back fang pockets alone is worth thousands of galleons. Not to mention the skin, the scales or the end of the tail. Don’t even get me started on the internal organs. They’re practically priceless!”

“Ugh...” Ron made a disgusted face and turned a bit green around the gills.

“So… you want us to… uhm….” Harry stumbled over his words.

“Harvest? Yes. If you want. It’s yours.” 

“What do you mean it’s mine?”

“You killed it, it’s yours by law."

“I’m not getting anywhere near that thing, thank you very much. You two are on your own." Ron said flatly.

“I’m not sure I want to have anything to do with it either, to be perfectly honest.” Harry also told her.

“But...”

“Look, if you want, you’re welcomed to do with it whatever you want.” Harry said “I just… It has too many bad memories attached to it for me. Harvest it, sell it, leave it there, give it away to charity for all I care.”

“But... that's not how the law works... Look, I can harvest it, if you want, we'll see about selling it and then you can give me however much a part of it you want.” she said.

"Alright, but then Ron should also get a part of it."

"Me? Mate, you don't have to..."

"It's settled then. Hermione will handle the harvest and sale and we split everything evenly between us." Harry told them grinning.

"Well, if you're sure..." Hermione said.

“I’m sure.”

The truth was she’d need the money if she was going to give up her parents’ allowance and their support. She’d have to support herself come June the latest, if not sooner. It made her feel both independent and heartbroken.

“Alright, so here’s how things are.” she said, shaking the melancholy away and moving to the next subject. “Snape hasn’t recovered completely from whatever happened on Saturday night so whatever it was, it was big. I want to find out what happened. So I want us to practice Disillusioning spells.”

Ron groaned.

“Did you seriously bring us here for more study? Are you bloody kidding me? And what does one have to do with the other?”

“Ron.” she said pointing her finger at him like Harry had done the day before “We need to be prepared and I need to follow Snape around without being noticed.”

“You want to spy on Snape? Hermione, _are you out of you bloody mind_?! Do you have a death wish? He’s more private than a female dragon with a nest full of eggs! He'll kill you if he catches you!"

She rolled her eyes at his dramatics.

“Honestly, Ron, the man's a teacher, not a bloody murderer. I plan on finding out what's going on and I will. I’m sick of always being taken by surprise and of everyone always being one step ahead of us.”

Harry was just sitting in one of the comfortable chairs looking thoughtful.

“Alright.” he said “I think Hermione’s right. I’ll practice with her. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, mate.”

“Like I’d just sit by and do shit all...” Ron grumbled “But this is peer pressure, is what it is! I want it noted that I’m doing this under duress!”

“We know, Ron.” both her and Harry said in unison.

 

 


	6. A conscience

_  
_

_Dear Mum,_

_I really want to talk to both of you about something but I don’t want to do it over the email. It’s nothing bad, don’t worry! I know the school year just started, but I’m feeling particularly home sick this term and... I’d like to come visit next weekend? Do you think you could talk to the Headmaster and arrange a weekend home for me? Please, mum, I really need a short break. I’m sure you can find some plausible excuse._

_All my love,_

_Hermione_

 

_Darling,_

_We’d love to have you for a weekend! I’ll tell Proffesor Dumbledore we’re celebrating our twenty year anniversary and we’re having a party that you cannot miss. I’m sure there won’t be any problems. I’ll write to him about arranging for you to Floo to The Leaky Cauldron and your father and I will pick you up at the gas station right across from to it. How does that sound?_

_We love you and can’t wait to see you,_

_Mum and Dad_

 

Hermione felt more than a little emotional reading her mother’s reply. She’d always known where she got her planning streak from. If her mother put her mind to something, she was really quite formidable. She knew Hermione had had problems adjusting in past years. She knew about the bullying and she knew just how much it had affected her. Hermione hated using that card with her, knowing full well her parents would respond in an instant if they felt she was in any sort of discomfort, but there was no getting around it. She needed to be in physical proximity to them to put her plan in motion and she was also going to use her time in London to arrange for a number of other things. She’d made a list. Well, she’d made a whole lot more than just a list, really, it was more like a six month plan, but she had so many things to keep track of, good planning was essential.

The news from the Wizarding community were deteriorating at an alarming rate. They were at war. It wasn’t full blown, but Hermione could read the signs. She was part of a few Facebook Muggleborns’ Groups in London and England. Three Muggleborn families had been attacked in the last two weeks alone. There hadn’t been any Dark Marks above the houses, but the attacks were more than suspicious. The papers hadn’t reported anything, which meant the Ministry was keeping them quiet. Maybe not to incite more panic. Maybe for other reasons. Hermione didn’t know and frankly didn’t care.

What she did know was that she was going to get her parents out of the country as soon as possible. There was no more time for them to properly sort their lives in London and make a smooth transition to somewhere else. Hermione needed to move fast, because she had a million other things to worry about after delivering her parents to safety. So after two days of searching and researching and making phone calls, she had decided on Australia. It was far enough, her mother had always said her dream was to live somewhere warm and sunny and, what had really been the deciding factor, travel there via Portkey was strictly regulated and very expensive. It would be incredibly difficult for a Death Eater to find them and, she hoped to God, more trouble than it was worth.

Of course, all this meant that her parents needed to travel there the good old fashioned muggle way. She was going to have to sort through quite a lot of paperwork. She had decided to first send her parents on a prolonged vacation. It would win her a few months and she needed the time. The magical community around Perth, in Western Australia, sounded like it was developed and quite lovely, so that’s where she decided they would go. Provided she survived the war, she wanted to be able to visit them. It gnawed at her to be making all these decisions for them without their consent, but she simply didn’t know what else to do. It was the safest and fastest way to get them out. She needed to keep this in mind or else the guilt was going to eat her alive.

She Skyped with a real estate agency in Perth and they sent her an offer with the houses they had for lease. She settled on this beach dream house with a large porch and wind chimes and a willow in the back yard. She hoped her parents would like it. She used her savings to pay for them to reserve the place until her parents got there. She was going to get the money back from them so she didn’t worry. She then bought plane tickets for them in two weeks time. She hoped it would be enough time. The house in London would have to be leased as well. It was a good way for them to pay the rent and utilities in Perth, really, as Perth was a lot cheaper than London. And dentists were always needed, so there would be no problem for them to find jobs. It was a good plan. Hermione knew it was. The only problem with it was that it was going to have to be carried out through deceit and manipulation. And Hermione hated it. She hated it like she'd never hated anything in her life. Just the thought of it made her feel dirty and like the worst kind of traitor.

She was going to have to use a combination of Confundus spells, Persuasion spells and Obliviation. She would effectively trick her parents into leaving the country. She would also trick them into signing important papers. For the entire two weeks before her scheduled weekend home, she was hit with wave after wave of crippling guilt and anxiety. When she realized that after they left she would have to Polyjuice as them and forge their signatures to close down their practice and put it up for sale, she was so sick she threw up her entire lunch and cried for two hours. They’d worked their entire lives for that practice. What right did she have to decide what they did and where they lived and how they spent their lives, no matter the circumstances? And if they had been fully aware of the situation and had decided to stay anyway, what then? What right did Hermione have to take that decision away from them? What right did she have to decide the course of their lives for them?

None. She had absolutely no right. And yet she was going to do it anyway. She could admit it, in her heart of hearts, how completely, utterly selfish it was. She didn’t want them taken away from her. She couldn’t bear it if they died in this war. She could count the number of people she loved on her fingers and she wasn’t going to lose the most important two, not like this, not if she could help it. And there was another, more ruthless factor to take into consideration. They couldn’t afford to have her parents taken hostage. Ron’s parents’ were magical, they had ways to protect themselves that her parents simply didn’t. They were also from an old Pureblood family, even if now destitute. That alone afforded them a measure of safety. If Voldemort was going to concentrate his efforts on someone, it was going to be on destroying Harry Potter and his close allies. Everyone knew the three of them were inseparable. She was perfectly aware they all had gigantic bull’s eyes painted on their backs. She knew they were going to have to fight. She knew it was going to be life and death and she knew their chances were slim. But at least they _had_ a chance. Her parents had nothing but a few measly wards and her mother’s can of pepper spray. Hermione couldn’t afford a conscience.

 

 


	7. Loneliness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remember how I said the chapters would be short? Well, I wasn't kidding, heh. It's just easier this way. I write something, I proof read it once and then post it. It sort of has the feeling of a journal. I like it.
> 
> This has now become entirely AU, I have to tell you. We are diverging from the canon events, as you can see and there will be no going back. :D
> 
> I also wanted to let you guys know that, for me, Severus does NOT have the face of Alan Rickman. As much as I love and admire the hell out of him, I really don't see Snape that way. How I really think of him is as Adrien Brody. Big nose, thin lanky dark hair, completely different man. You can see below a picture, to understand what I'm talking about ;)
> 
> I happen to think Adrien Brody is the most representative for Severus Snape. But I'll let you decide for yourselves. Enjoy!

She hated herself.

"We've missed you so much, darling, it's so good to see you!" her mother said, kissing her on both cheeks. Hermione stiffled the impulse to crawl into her arms and hide from the entire world.

"Come on, let's go home, you look like you could use a cup of tea." her father told her after giving her a warm hug.

She almost lost it right then and there. She didn't remember the car ride to their house and when they arrived she excused herself to go to the bathroom.

She put a silencing charm around the room, braced her hands on the sink and screamed until her throat was hoarse. She gave herself five minutes to sob uncontrollably and get it out of her system. She had to do this. She had a perfectly good plan and she was going to follow through. She could do this. This was for their own good. This was to save their lives. Just... breathe, Hermione.

She still hated herself.

A wave of fury burned like bile in her stomach. She hated this fucking war and she hated the human cruelty and bigotry and sheer... sheer... idiocy behind it! And she hated Voldemort and his stupid fucking face! She cried for her parents and the injustice of having their world upturned for no reason, she cried for her lack of choices and she cried for herself.

"Ugh..." she groaned exhausted, after a good log while, looking at her bedraggled face in the mirror.

"You know, more hate isn't remotely going to make things better... You can't fight in the name of hate, that's makes you just like them."

She sighed and splashed cold water on her face. The crying helped. She felt calmer.

"Listen, Hermione." She told herself in the mirror, her face blotchy and her nose red "You're going to go out there and have a cup of tea with mum and dad, and then you're going to Confund them into looking for the house ownership papers while you call the real estate agent and tell her you've arrived and are ready to meet. You're going to make them sign a lease contract for the house and you're going to plant the conviction in their minds that they've thought about this for years. That they can't wait to move to Australia and start a new life there. You will give them the check-in papers for the airport for next week and you'll speak with them about how excited they must be about the move and how they've looked for a house there and finally found something they like, to cement the spell. Then you're going to take your mum and go to the bank and transfer all of their savings for University and put them into your account and you will NOT feel guilty about it. You will do this because it's necessary and because it's the only way and you will not have another fucking breakdown. You can do this, Granger."

Taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders, she took down the silencing ward and walked out of the bathroom.

 

* * *

 

She returned to school on Sunday evening, numb and hollow. She was grateful for the Headmaster being busy and his subsequent haste to get her out of his office. She didn’t feel like talking. She didn’t feel like much of anything except crawling under a rock and never coming out, really.

She walked to the Gryffindor Common Room where Lavender and Parvati where playing spin the bottle with Seamus and a few other guys. She didn’t see either Ron or Harry. It was a relief. She said a perfunctory hello and went straight to the dorm where she collapsed on the bed and just lay there for what felt like an eternity.

It was done. She’d done absolutely everything on her to do list for the weekend and it had all gone without a hitch. She was a little scared of how well it had gone, to be honest. It seemed entirely too easy and uncomplicated for the amount of change her actions would wreak. Her parents would be leaving the country on Wednesday. After a series of Obliviations that she did over the course of Saturday, they were convinced they’d been planning this move for months. Everything in Perth had been taken care of and their secretary was going to handle closing the practice in London. She was unbelievably relieved she didn’t have to do it herself. They would take care of the rest by themselves now that she’d put the wheels in motion. She had secured locks of their hair, but she didn’t think she was going to need the Polyjuice after all. They could always sign documents online.

On Sunday she had gone to Gringotts to transfer most of her Muggle funds to her vault. She kept a few hundred pounds for emergencies in her regular bank account, and also kept some cash on her as well, but it was just easier to access money through Gringotts, not to mention more secure. She had more than she expected, but still not much considering they were her entire source of money for the foreseeable future. She would have to start harvesting the Basilisk and figure out a way to sell the ingredients. She would definitely have to do it on the black market, there was no way she could just go to an apothecary and claim she had Basilisk venom or skin. The Aurors would be on her in minutes. She had gone to an apothecary in Diagon to buy ingredients for Polyjuice, because God knew, she was going to need it for something at some point and best be prepared. They had been horrendously expensive. She now understood why Snape had been so furious about them being stolen. She had no idea how much the Basilisk was worth, really. She knew it was expensive but not more than that. She’d have to find out for how much the ingredients sold. She had no idea how she was going to accomplish all of it, but planning helped, as always.

If she managed to keep herself busy enough, she might just be able to forget that there was a good chance she would never see her parents again. They wouldn’t even know if something happened to her. After she Obliviated them she’d planted the conviction in their minds that she was taking an apprenticeship this summer and had been promised a job. Complete rubbish and not at all how things worked of course, but they wouldn’t know the difference.

She felt so alone, she didn’t know what to do with herself. All her safety nets were gone. She was completely on her own for the first time in her life and she felt the difference keenly. Whatever the future brought, she only had herself and her friends to count on. She felt independent, but it came with a big dose of guilt, despair and paralyzing fear.

She’d never thought being an adult could be this harrowing.

 

 


	8. Watching

 

Monday came with a thirst for knowledge. Hermione was exhausted by the sheer emotional upheaval the weekend had brought and wanted nothing more than to immerse herself in the relaxing arms of learning. Professor Sprout stepped up to the challenge by discussing the use of Indian turmeric in combination with Ginseng in certain European potions to obtain a heightened sense of smell and touch. It wasn't in the curriculum, she thought it sounded fascinating and found herself forgetting everything else for the hour.

After lunch she had DADA, where they worked again on non-verbal charms. Snape seemed distracted and thoughtful. She worked with a boy from Hufflepuff and more or less tutored him the entire class. She tried doing it as discreetly as possible, but she still felt Snape’s eyes boring into the back of her neck more often than not. She kept expecting him to snap, judging by the raised eyebrow and the sneer, but by some miracle of Merlin he refrained from tearing the Hufflepuff a new one. 

After class she decided to go to the Chamber and work on the Polyjuice. She had some essays to write for tomorrow, but she could write those in her sleep, it wouldn’t take more than an hour. She’d splurged and gotten herself a Self- Writing Quill last year and it had made her life _so_ much easier. The main reason homework usually took her so long was because she had to actually write the bloody thing down. With a pen. On paper. She was used to typing on her laptop almost as fast as she spoke and it annoyed her how much time she was wasting with pen and scrolls. 

She never mentioned it, she didn’t want to make people feel uncomfortable or for her to look like she was singing her own praises, but she found the theoretical part of school less than challenging. What no one except the teachers and her two best friends knew was that she'd been a gifted child. She'd learned to read on her own when she was three and by the time she was six she could speak three languages. She used to read Physics and Chemistry manuals instead of bedtime stories. When her Hogwarts letter had come, she'd been enrolled in a school with a special program for gifted children and had already been a member of Mensa for two years.   

People thought she always had a book with her because she was so completely nerdy, which obviously _she was_ , but she was also completely bored half the time. How to explain it to her peers that she’d read up to her fifth year manuals in first year? That by her second year she’d finished all the sixth year ones and the special NEWT's brochures and had started turning to specialized studies and scientific journals just to occupy her time? They'd look at her like she was some kind of freak. Well... even more than they already did. 

She finished the second stage of the Polyjuice and let it simmer. It needed to do that for the next forty-eight hours. She finished her essays and started practicing Disillusioning herself non-verbally. She was doing it all the time now. She would close the curtains on her bed and make herself invisible and then visible, again and again and again. It was a tricky little charm, which was why most people had trouble with it. It required a very focused sort of intent and a complicated, precise wand movement. She’d realized that, since she’d started martial training, her wrists, arms and forearms had become significantly stronger. That helped, it seemed. What helped even more and not just with this particular charm but overall, was how meditation had increased her concentration levels. She’d found a book in fourth year about yogis and their innate sense of magic. The author had speculated it had to do with all the meditation and had presented a few interesting theories. The knowledge had stayed with her and she’d started practicing the previous year. Magic worked with intent, intent needed concentration and using certain patterns of breathing seemed to help a great deal. She'd been experimenting with it a lot and could see palpable results.

Al these skills and defensive charms would be vital in a confrontation and it had become crystal clear just how much since she’d started following Snape around. An opponent would be hard pressed to hex you, if they didn’t know where you were. A good Disillusioning and Silencing charm on yourself was crucial. The Silencing charm differed from the Silencio charm. The latter prevented people it was aimed at from uttering a single sound. The former was an advanced form of warding that targeted a specific part or the entire body and made it inaudible to the world around. A sort of close range muffling charm, really. It concealed breathing, rustling clothes or squeaky shoes.

She’d been careful until now, and done an adequate job of closely observing Snape for the past two weeks without getting close. She was planning on changing that. She knew his schedule by heart now, although it certainly wasn’t rocket science. He went to breakfast in The Great Hall most mornings. Then he had classes until lunch at one thirty, which he took somewhere else. Hermione suspected it was in his quarters, they were connected to his classroom, but she couldn’t be sure. Then he had classes again until five.

He mostly had dinner in The Great Hall. He sometimes went to the Library, but he always took the books with him, he never stayed to read there. He had visited the greenhouses three times in the two weeks she’d watched him and Hagrid’s hut twice. Hermione was extremely intrigued by this last piece of information. What could Snape possibly have to do with Hagrid? The man loathed the half giant.

The other startling fact she’d found was that he used the most elaborate, ridiculous ways to get around the castle. He never went straight from one place to another. At first she'd thought he was aware someone was following him and had prepared herself for the  inevitable confrontation, at least mentally. It never came. Still he detoured, walked around,  never took the fastest route anywhere and it wasn’t like he did it to admire the bloody scenery! He walked like there were trolls chasing after him. That’s where the silencing charms on her shoes really proved their worth, because even though she wore soft soled tennis shoes, most times she’d have to jog in order to keep up with him and she ended up panting by the time they reached their destination. It was doing great things for her cardio workouts, but bloody fucking hell, was it annoying! 

Hermione didn’t know why he was doing this, but since he didn’t seem the type to just do it out of boredom and since he always had the walking style of someone with a great deal of purpose, she strongly suspected it had to do with not becoming predictable. Just like her first instinct had dictated, it was like he was making being followed as difficult and unlikely as possible. The paranoid bastard.

But, disappointingly enough, except for the library, the greenhouses and the hut, the man didn’t seem to go anywhere. He barely interacted with the rest of the staff. All the other professors could be seen talking to each other during the day, visiting each other’s classes, sharing the occasional cup of tea, speaking to the ghosts. Never Snape. He didn’t go outside to sit on the grass on sunny days, like McGonagal, he couldn’t be seen admiring the lake from the towers like Dumbledore, he didn’t even seem to have a favorite place to read outside of his class and quarters, like almost anyone in the Castle.

She found it… disconcertingly sad. She couldn’t imagine living such a life. It seemed unbearably lonely. And she’d thought that she was withdrawn and socially awkward! At least she had a number of friends that would always be there if she needed anything and who she could have a decent conversation with. And no matter what anyone thought, she didn’t mind going to the occasional gathering. Snape, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have anyone. He lived like a hermit in a bloody castle filled with people.  It must be some kind of record. Of course, he _might_  have lots of friends outside the school, maybe even a loving family somewhere... but she had doubts about it.

 

* * *

 

“Severus, if I could have a word?” Dumbledore said on Wednesday, making his way over to the Professor.

Hermione’s ears perked up. She was sitting cross legged a little ways off, to the Potions Master’s left, in the shadow of a bookcase, as he was perusing a shelf in the library. He’d been at it for the past half hour, getting visibly more frustrated the more fruitless his search turned. After the first ten minuets she’d just sat down. It was rather entertaining to watch how the vein at his right temple would start twitching, as he rolled his eyes at something he read. He also muttered to himself incessantly and made faces, which Hermione found absolutely hilarious. She would never have guessed it, not in a million years, that the man talked to himself so much.

She was invisible, of course. She’d become so good at it, not even a single ripple showed around her anymore so she was more and more confident about staying closer to him, even when the lighting was good.

“Headmaster?” he responded, his face once more a mask of indifference.

Dumbledore gestured for him to follow and they moved further down the isle, towards the back. Hermione approached on the isle next to theirs and cast a weak eavesdropping spell. Very useful that.

“I was thinking Saturday.” The Headmaster said cryptically.

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“Entirely too soon, I haven’t had a time to even approach Lucius, and for the love of Merlin, _why_ are we discussing this _here_?” Snape hissed.

“Oh… I was just on my way to visit Pomona and inspiration struck!” Dumbledore said cheerfully.

“Did it strike you upside the head, maybe?”

Hermione stifled  a snort. Ok, so he could be funny. Shoot her.

Dumbledore seemed to find it extremely funny too and hit Snape lightly on the shoulder in retaliation. It made the Potions Master narrow his eyes and Dumbledore grinned. Hermione was finding this entire exchange dumbfounding.

“When were you planning on approaching him?”

“I don’t know. Soon. I keep telling you, Albus, it needs to be done delicately. If he smells even the tiniest bit of foul play, the whole endeavor is screwed.”

“I was hoping it might be sooner rather than later.”

“There’s a charity ball they’re attending on Sunday. I’ll do my best to corner him there. I’m going to play it by ear though, if I see him getting suspicious, change of plans. So don’t get your hopes up.”

Dumbledore’s easy demeanor seemed to dim somewhat. Snape was looking at him with intensity.

“I promise to do everything I can, Albus.”

“I know you will, my friend.”

“I need to get back to research.”

“What are you looking for?”

“A way to infuse aloe vera roots in combination with… oh, it doesn’t bloody matter, Albus!” he said, gesturing for the Headmaster to leave “Go see Pomona. Have some of her sorry excuse for a tea. Stop worrying. I’ll handle this.”

“Alright, then.” Dumbledore said, smiling warmly and patting him on the arm.

Hermione moved deeper into the shadows as Snape went back to perusing and she was left to think about everything she’d heard.

The Headmaster wanted Snape to talk to Lucius Malfoy about something and it was important. They needed Malfoy for something. But for what? What could Dumbledore possibly want with the slimy bastard. Weren’t they enemies? And just how much did the Headmaster trust Snape?

She needed more information.

 

 

 


	9. The Awakening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't uploaded in more than a month, I know. Sorry! RL got a little hectic there for a while, but in a good way! Anyway. Hope you enjoy this chapter, let me know what you think :*
> 
> Oh, uhm... Warning for some dubious consent in this hapter. Just a tiny bit though.

 

“ _Follow me.”_

_The words rang true and clear in her head and she opened her eyes. She couldn’t see much. She was in a dark corridor and the only light came from the wand of the wizard in front of her. She’d recognize that back anywhere._

_But she couldn’t remember how she got here. Or where here was._

“ _I seriously question your intelligence sometimes.”_

_She felt herself laugh._

_Laugh??!!_ _h She hadn’t wanted to laugh. She hadn’t intended to laugh and she didn’t know why she couldn’t stop and ask what was going on. She had absolutely no influence over her body. She tried stopping again. Nothing. She tried speaking, raising her arm, hell, she tried blinking! Nothing. Oh, God... She must be Imperiused. Surely, this was how it felt. She’d never really believed Snape capable of using and Unforgivable on one of his students, no matter what some of them whispered about him in the dark corners of the castle. And yet here she was._

_She tried remembering what she’d read about the curse and how to fight it. She tried clearing her mind and imagine taking control over every cell in her body. She remembered reading it should feel like fighting off a very strong Calming Draught, except it only affected your body? Or was it your mind? Damn it, she couldn't remember._

_She felt like she was suspended somewhere inside her mind, seeing and hearing but with no sense of touch. Was that how it was supposed to feel? She had no idea and she was no closer to fighting off this curse than three minutes ago. Fuckity fuck!_

_This was a very good time to start panicking, she thought. Except... that required an elevated heart rate and adrenaline and a lot of physical reactions she had no access to right now. It was the strangest sensation she’d ever felt. She was herself and yet… not at all._

“ _No, you don’t darling.” her body responded.  
_

_Darling? Darling??!!! What the hell kind of compulsion was this?_

_She felt herself thinking he was smiling even though his back was turned. She had no idea how she came to this conclusion._

“ _No… but I do question mine. Multiple times a day, in fact.”_

_Yes, he was definitely smiling. That little self-depricating one, that made the right corner of his mouth move._

_Wait, **what**? Where was all this information coming from?_

“ _Do you? I can think of several much more productive things you could do several times a day...”_

_Jesus fucking Christ, had she really just said that?_

“ _Ugh.” he groaned. “Please don’t.”_

_Yes, Hermione, please, for the love of fucking God, please, **please** don't! Snap out of it!_

“ _What?” her treacherous body asked innocently._

_This had to be the most bizarre, disturbing…_

“ _You know perfectly well what. And right now we have a mission to take care of.”_

“ _I wouldn’t worry, we’re very good at taking care of all manner of things...”_

_What the actual, freaking fuck?! How was he making her say all these things? And if she’d never have believed him capable of Imperiusing a student, the thought of him doing it to enact some psychotic, demented sexual fantasy was so far beyond the realm of possibility, she’d have believed herself crazy just thinking about it!_

_Snape barked out a laugh and half turned his head towards her, smirking good-naturedly._

“ _I fell right into that one, didn’t I?”_

“ _You make it exceptionally easy sometimes, luv, yes.”_

_She was going to be sick…_

_He spun around with a speed she wouldn’t have thought him capable of and pinned her to the wall. Before she could process it, his nose was level with hers, his eyes were huge and piercing and his body was flush against hers._

_The body... giggled. It fucking giggled and Severus fucking Snape, the most unflappable, the most sarcastic, caustic, reserved man she had ever met was fighting a smirk three inches away from her face and he looked... nothing like himself. He looked young and carefree, he was wearing blue under his robes for crying out loud and when he stopped fighting the smile and gave into it... he was..._

“ _Did you just call me easy…?” he queried, not seeming to be in any way disturbed by so suddenly destroying his reputation of utter bastard._

“ _Did I?...” the body smiled back, turning her head slightly to the side and ghosting her lips over his. “You’re certainly easy on the eyes...”_

_Ok, there was no way any kind of compulsion would work the way this... this... episode was developing. The things that came out of her mouth... How could he possibly make her say these things? This had to be something else._

“ _Do try not to lay it on quite so thick, darling.”_

_Again with the endearments. There was no universe in the galaxy in which Severus Snape would willingly call her "darling" not even for some strange, deviant sexual fantasy. It was simply not possible. Something else was going on here!_

“ _I hapoen to find you exceptionally attractive, Severus."_

_He caressed her cheek with the pad of his thumb and kissed her so softly she thought she’d imagined it._

“ _We’ll be late.” he told her._

“ _Let us.”_

“ _You’ll be the death of me.”_

“ _I certainly hope not."_

“W _e cannot be late… yet again. The ambassador is going to have a fit. Not to mention the state in which we arrived last time..."_

_"It's not my fault you can't do a simple anti-wrinkle charm."_

_"The point is we owe him for last time."_

_He closed the distance between them again, but this time he kissed her deep and hungry and... and she felt it, in a certain way... yet she didn’t quite feel it at all. He was incredibly close and her body had closed her eyes, his scent permeated her consciousness and she felt herself trying to inhale more of it. It was… heady…_

_If she’d been able to jerk herself away, she would have. What in the name of Merlin was she doing?!_

_She felt crammed inside this strange, unresponsive body and there wasn’t enough air to draw in! She felt like she was falling from somewhere very high or ascending from somewhere very low, with a speed not meant for human bodies and any minute now she was going to come crashing down on..._

With a gasp, she opened her eyes and stared at the well known canopy of her bed, breathing heavily. Her heart was beating fast enough to jump out of her chest and she scrambled to stand up. She looked frantically around herself, but there was no one there. Had she been sleeping? Had this been a dream?! She didn’t remember going to bed. She looked down at herself and tried to think. She’d been meditating. Had she fallen asleep while meditating? 

But... It couldn’t have been a dream, she remembered everything with absolute crystal clarity and nothing about this experience had felt like a dream in the slightest! She opened the curtains of her bed and looked for her roommates. Everything looked completely normal. Parvati was applying a face mask, Lavender was writing something in a notebook and June and Corrine where lying on one of the beds, talking quietly. She drew back, confused.

Had Snape abducted her, Imperiused her, only half Obliviated her and returned her to her dorm? She cast Tempus Maxima and the time, date and century appeared in front of her. She’d started meditating exactly twenty minutes ago. And when she’d started all her dorm-mates had been in the room. There was absolutely no way someone, even someone as skilled at Snape, could have done all of this in under fifteen minutes.

This was the strangest thing that had ever happened to her. Had someone cursed her? Had it been a curse induced nightmare? Was that why it had felt so terrifyingly real? Did it have anything to do with the meditating? It had been a meditation to open her second chakra. She swallowed hard. The chakra of emotions, sexuality and pleasure. She’d found the meditation in a book. It was written by a muggle. Wasn’t it? She’d certainly found it in a muggle bookstore. It was a New York Times best seller for crying out loud, it wasn’t even some obscure little tome.

It hadn’t felt like any dream she’d ever had. It was richer, entirely too lucid and there was something about it… This feeling of distinctly being two people, two minds, inside one body, but still being the same... person, somehow? She couldn’t even begin to describe how it felt, because she had absolutely no reference point to compare it too. She had vague words, but nothing that could truly describe the experience. The second chakra… also the chakra of clairsentience.

Oh, God, she’d dreamed about kissing Professor Snape. On the mouth! She’d dreamed about them being a couple! And not just that. It wasn’t really the kissing that bothered her. It was the tenderness, the intimacy apparent between them. The connection, the familiarity. It had been… natural. Honest. Like they’d been together a long time. Like they’d been a couple for years. Like they were in… No. She couldn’t think about it. It was preposterous.

What kind of sick, stupid curse was this? She looked at her watch and saw that it was close to midnight. She was so awake she didn’t think she’d be able to sleep for a week. No, she needed to research. She peeked outside the curtains of her bed, then Disillusioned herself and headed for the library with a pencil and a notebook. She was going to get to the bottom of this!

 

 


	10. Conditions

 

If there was one place Hermione loved in this drafty, strange, ever changing, almost sentient immensity of a bloody castle, it was the Library. She’d always felt so much better here. Like all of her questions could find answers. Like all you had to do for things to make sense was just a bit more research, and there you had it. Not tonight, it seemed. No, tonight, for the first time since she could remember, the bloody library was completely fucking _useless_!

Alright, so maybe not _completely_ useless. She did manage to find out what _hadn’t_ happened. Namely the Imperius Curse. Apparently, it was nothing like what she had gone through at all. The curse, when properly cast, places the victim in a calm, trance-like state in which all feelings of responsibility and anxiety are banished. That was definitely not how she’d felt. If performed poorly, the curse can have long lasting, destructive effects on the mind, usually leaving one insane. Hermione didn’t suddenly imagine herself a duck or anything equally horrifying, so that hadn’t happened either.

But she couldn’t find any records or mention of a connection between meditation and any sort of out of body experience or trance. It seemed wizard folk meditated just like muggles did, with no known strange side effects. But Hermione knew for a fact that what she had experienced was not a dream. She knew this with the certainty she knew she was alive. Whatever she had experienced, it hadn’t been a dream, but she couldn’t no matter where she looked, find any sort of clue or explanation.

She’d already spent three days reading about almost nothing else and she was disheartened, exhausted and just bloody done. She was ready to pass it off as a strange episode triggered by… who the fuck knew?! Stress. There! You could successfully blame anything on stress! She was stressed about the war and how her parents were adjusting to Australia and the possible end of the world as they knew it, so she’d… imagined a quirky little romantic scene involving her most obnoxious, insulting teacher who happened to be twenty years her senior. Sure! Why the fuck not?!

“Ugh...” she groaned, slowly slamming her forehead repeatedly against the library desk.

She gathered her notebook, notes and pencils and decided to just go to bed. It was Sunday evening, she’d completely failed to look into what Snape was supposed to be doing tonight at The Malfoys and she hadn’t even learned anything important. She was done with this week.

 

* * *

 

Monday afternoon, as she was walking to the DADA class, she felt something wet connect with her forehead. She tilted her head up, startled, to discover nothing but dry, ordinary ceiling above. She kept walking, ready to brush it off, only to feel it again. She stopped and looked around, wiping her forehead and looking at her fingers. It was something clear and wet. Slightly disgusted and apprehensive, she brought the fingers to her nose. It didn’t smell like anything. Water then? From where?

In the complete silence surrounding her, which really, should have made her suspicious immediately, she heard faint sounds of swooshing... like a tap left opened in one of the bathrooms... except she wasn't anywhere near a bathroom. She strained to listen harder and soon enough the sound got louder. It now sounded like a river, or like a small fountain somewhere nearby. She looked around again. The corridor was unnaturally empty for this hour of the day and the sound of running water kept getting louder and louder. She was starting to get scared.

"Revela!" she cast the charm that reveals a Dissilusioned person nearby. There was no one.

The noise was getting louder and louder… it wasn’t the sound of running water anymore, it was of water crashing into something… louder…. and louder... Louder than sea waves crashing to a rocky shore on a stormy day... louder than any water she’d ever heard. She felt her heart in her throat as her breathing became sharp with fear and she almost screamed as the ground got pulled from under her suddenly.

_Almost screamed because it’s rather difficult to scream while completely submerged. She froze in shock for an agonizing moment before she could even remotely start to move. Somehow, miraculously, she managed not to swallow too much water and desperately started swimming… somewhere! She fervently hoped it was up!_

_It wasn’t freezing, the water, but it was definitely cold. There was no way to see anything, it was all a blur, and her throat was constricting from panic. Reaching the surface took both an eternity and was faster than she had expected. Objectively, it couldn't have been more than a few seconds. She coughed violently her first hungry lungful of air. After managing to get a decent breath in, she wiped her tangled hair away from her face so she could see where in the name of Merlin had she been transported to… and she started laughing. She was laughing and laughing, her eyes still closed and then she gave an honest to God scream of… it sure as hell sounded like excitement even though she had no idea why she’d feel anything of the sort._

_Oh, God... she knew this feeling of being in your body but not being in your body... it was happening again...  
_

_Her body opened her eyes and she noticed that she was at the base of some kind of huge waterfall, deep green jungle surrounding the shores and a slight mist floating in the air. There were some kind of exotic colorful birds flying above her head and the air was thick with the smell of life. If the water was relatively cold, the air was warmer than she’d ever experienced in England, even though the sky was cloudy and she couldn’t see the sun. How on earth had she gotten here? Where **was** here? Was it even real? And why in the name of Merlin did she have no clothes on?? _

_She looked around for some sign that she wasn't alone and there… right there on the shore, lounging on a towel, completely bloody naked and unselfconscious about it was none other than..._

“ _You should try the water, Severus, it’s fantastic!” she shouted at him loud enough to be heard over the waterfall._

_He smiled lazily and made a shooing gesture with his arm._

“Miss Granger?”

She was startled so badly she promptly fell on her ass, whimpering, which was a feat considering she’d been on the floor already on her hands and knees. She felt the hand that had been on her arm release her.

“Miss Granger, are you alright?” Snape said, looking worriedly at her.

“I…” oh, God, she’d just caught the mother off all eyefuls and now here he was, in his perfectly somber, black robes, looking at her from less than a foot away “I...” She was still in the corridor, her clothes weren’t even the slightest bit wet and she couldn’t, for the life of her understand, what had just happened??!!

“I’m alright… Professor...”

She was so far from being alright it wasn’t even funny.

He lifted an eyebrow and got up without further comment, holding his hand out to her. She accepted the help graciously.

“Thank you.”

“Well, if we’re done with the dramatics then, I believe we have a class to get to?” he drawled.

“I… yes. Right. Of course.”

She was completely bewildered and, at this point, beginning to get properly scared. What the hell just happened?! Was she going crazy? Was she having seizures? Maybe she had a brain tumor. Oh, God… those could definitely make you hallucinate, not to mention ultimately kill you. Had she been convulsing? He wouldn’t be so flippant about it had she been convulsing, would he? He certainly would have called Madame Pomfrey? Or taken her to infirmary? He was a right bastard, that was true, but he was still a teacher, he’d always cared about the safety of his students.

So maybe she hadn’t been convulsing… but that didn’t mean she wasn’t brain damaged in some way… or had a tumor… or some other neurological condition. Or maybe even a psychiatric one?… Maybe she was becoming psychotic… hallucinations, paranoia… fuck, it sort of even made sense… Maybe all those “adventures” with the boys were finally catching up with her psyche and this was its response. She’d read that could happen. Ugh… she really didn’t have time for a mental breakdown right now. She needed to see Madame Pomfrey.

 

* * *

 

“Absolutely nothing wrong with you, my dear!” the Healer smiled at her brightly.

“What? That can't be right.”

Madame Pomfrey gave her a quizzical look. Probably not the standard response to being told you were absolutely healthy.

“I mean...” Hermione floundered “I… I think I’ve been having hallucinations...” She’d said so already. Three times.

“Yes, sweetheart, but I think someone is just playing a prank on you.”

“What? What kind of prank?”

“Well, I can't tell for certain, it didn't leave any mark, but I’m guessing it would be a little Confundus Charm gone awry… tricky little things to cast that not everyone manages. And kids these days… complete disregard for safety… People don’t really understand the responsibility of caring for hundreds of magical children who are always two steps away from accidentally killing each other. That’s not even mentioning some of the curriculum...”she went on on a tangent.

“But...” how to tell the woman that Hermione, in her attempts at self preservation, which wasn’t paranoia, thank you very much, had been taking excessive precautions against most common jinxes and minor curses? The possibility of someone managing to Confund her without her realizing it were so minimal, they were practically non-existent. Of course, she couldn’t very well say so, some of the warning charms she’d put on all her clothes, not to mention the few choice amulets she’d created weren’t exactly on the Hogwarts approved curriculum. Or in any books one could get in the Library without breaking into the Restricted Section. 

“But are you absolutely certain?” she asked again.

“Positive, my dear! No, off you go, I still have charts to file and prescriptions to fill.”

As she was non too gracefully shooed out of the infirmary, Harmione couldn’t help but feel a strange mixture of both relief and dread. Because if neither neurological nor psychiatric conditions could be at fault… than what the hell was happening to her?


	11. The Bathroom

_She took a few shallow breaths and tried to think around the panic constricting her throat, the acrid smell of smoke and the dust and debris blown in her face by the strong gusts of wind. She lifted herself on her elbow but she could barely see a foot in front of her. She tried to get up and she made it all the way to all fours when she realized that the agonizing pain from her ankle meant it was probably broken, and badly. She didn’t think her other one was in any condition for her to hop on it either, so she stayed on all fours and crawled her way forward, trying to get some bearing on where she was. What really worried her was the sharp smell of gas. That was not a good sign._

_Large pieces of rock, concrete and stone pillars were strewn everywhere and she thought she distinguished a column somewhere to her left but it was quickly obscured by the debris blowing everywhere. Gods, it was like a sandstorm... she had to get to... she couldn't remember where she had to get to, probably to help the others but the details were foggy... There were screams in the distance. Screams and lightning and colored lights.  
_

_Sweat was breaking out under her arms, at the small of her back and on her forehead and the effort to keep going made her almost too nauseous to stand, her arms shaking and her breathing turning ragged. The sweat was getting in her eyes and she took a second to wipe it away. When she looked at her hand, the fingers were drenched in blood. Judging by the nausea and the dizziness she probably had a concussion._

_**Move** , her mind screeched at her..._

_She crawled some more._

_It felt like she’s been at this for hours. She was panting like she’d run a marathon and her entire body was one shrieking ball of excruciating pain but stopping was not an option. Quitting was not an option. Lying down and letting exhaustion overtake her was not an option. She was confused and her head felt like it was filled with cotton but if she stopped now she knew she would never get up again._

_Where was everyone? Why was_ _she_ _alone in this terrible wasteland of dust? What had happened?_ _Her_ _hand touched something and_ _she_ _lift_ _ed_ _her_ _eyes_ _to see another large piece of broken column right in front of_ _her_ _._ _She was_ _either going to have to climb it or go around_ _it_ _but_ _it was a long piece and,_ _at this rate, it might take_ _her_ _hours to circle it_ _._ _She_ _grip_ _ped_ _the stone with bruised fingers, leaving smears of dark red all over the pristine white of it. Grunting and growling and crying_ _she_ _somehow manage_ _d_ _to stand up on_ _her_ _good leg, leaning heavily on the column._ _She_ _gave_ _herself_ _a big thumbs up even though_ _she_ _knew_ _she was_ _really just a fragile step away from collapsing, but since that was definitely not an option_ _she’d_ _take all the encouragement_ _she_ _could get._

 _Head wounds, even superficial ones bled profusely and_ _she_ _wipe_ _d_ _at_ _her_ _face some more. As_ _she_ _got_ _ready to lift_ _her_ _injured foot over the body of the column,_ _she_ _heard_ _a deafening roar._ _Her_ _head shot up and_ _she_ _felt_ _her_ _eyes widen as dread drowned_ _out all_ _thought. The blast wave that followed lifted_ _her_ _up and hurled_ _her_ _back at a horrific speed._ _Her_ _ears_ _started_ _ringing sharply_ _and_ _then the world went_ _completely_ _silent. I_ _t felt like_ _everything wa_ _s moving_ _in slow motion._ _She_ _ha_ _d_ _all the time in the world to think... this feels just like flying..._ _she_ _ha_ _d_ _the time to feel the wind whipping_ _her_ _hair in front of_ _her_ _face_ _and_ _a_ _s_ _she took_ _in the sight before her_ _, she suddenly_ _remember_ _ed_ _what_ _it was that she_ _was supposed to be doing.  
_

_Fighting._ _She_ _was supposed to_ _be_ _fight_ _ing_ _._ _She_ _was supposed to protect_ _Harry!_ _And_ _Hogwarts!_ _A split second was all_ _she_ _ha_ _d_ _, but it felt like an eternity as_ _she_ _got_ _a perfect bird eye view of everything around_ _her_ _and it was all … gone. There was_ _nothing_ _left. The_ _castle_ _, the gardens, the_ _lake_ _... the people... Oh, sweet_ _Merlin_ _... the people..._ _teachers and enemies and children... so many children..._ _All_ _she_ _could see were_ _bodies strewn everywhere,_ _deep craters, crushed_ _pieces of building_ _, dust and fires breaking out for as far as she could see._ _She_ _ha_ _d_ _time to think..._ _we failed..._ _she_ _ha_ _d_ _time to think... nothing could have survived this…_ _she had time to think..._ _Severus_ _..._

 _A_ _scream start_ _ed_ _to build in the back of_ _her_ _throat... but before it made it out_ _she_ _felt_ _her_ _back and_ _her_ _head violently_ _connect with_ _something and the world went black._

An instant later she snapped her eyes open, gasping for air and the scream broke free, echoing in her ears until all that was left of it was a strangled, gurgled keening that couldn't possibly have come from her own throat. The usual loud chatter that was The Great Hall during lunch was completely silent, as every eye in the room was fixed on her. She instinctively covered her mouth with her hand and felt wetness on her cheeks. The boys were on their feet, Harry coming around towards her, a concerned look in his eyes and Ron’s mouth was agape, the remains of a sandwich in his hands.

She stuttered an apology towards the High Table but was too shell shocked to even begin contemplating an excuse or an explanation. Harry helped her up, but she couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t look at anyone. She grabbed her things and fled just as the murmurs were starting to rise. The boys called after her but she didn’t stop. She went straight to Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, locked and warded the door and braced her hands against the sink.

She stood there for a couple of minutes, swaying and feeling the cold wind of Scotland trying to choke her with dust. She tried to glue together the scattered pieces of her mind but it felt like building with dry sand. She could still hear the screaming, see the destruction and smell, underneath the gas and rubble and burning wood, the pervasive, unmistakable smell of blood and... burning flesh. She barely made it to the stall in time to empty the contents of her stomach.

She dry heaved for long, exhausting minutes before flushing the toilet and going back to the sink to splash water on her face and clean her mouth. She felt shaky and clammy. She _was_ , in fact, shaking all over and she tried forcing herself to take slow, even breaths.

She'd been cursed. There was no other explanation. She had no idea why it wouldn’t come up in any of the diagnosing spells Madame Pomfrey had performed, but that didn’t mean much. Dark spells were notoriously tricky to pinpoint. Some never even left a mark in the first place, they would just lay there, dormant in the victim's body, expectant until the trigger that unleashed them.

She snorted when she realized how long the list of people who would want to curse her was and how most of them had access to books on dark magic in their very homes. There was also the matter of one Severus Snape appearing in two out of three hallucinations she’d had. Maybe there was something there. She looked at herself in the mirror and raised a trembling hand to adjust her hair.

There had been something different about this hallucination though. For the first two she’d been lucid. She’d still had her own thoughts. But in this last one she’d been completely submerged in the mind and body of her other self. And it had been the longest one yet. She looked at her watch. She’d sat down for lunch fifteen minutes ago. A ridiculously short time compared to how long it felt. Was this how the curse worked then? It slowly made her lose her grip on reality? Would she succumb to the hallucinations, leaving her body a husk with an empty look and a straight jacket on?

She felt like the more she tried coming up with answers, the more tangled she got in the questions and there didn’t seem to be any end in sight. She could try telling Ron and Harry, but tell them what? That she was going insane? That exactly now, when they all needed each other the more, she was crumbling under the pressure and falling apart? Tears of fear and frustration clouded her vision and she let out a stangled sob. She needed to find out what this curse was before she lost all semblance of sanity. And Merlin, she had so many other things she should be doing eight now! She pressed her palms to her eyes and tried taking slow, even breaths. She was glad for the silence and privacy of the bathroom and the coolness of the air at least. It helped calm her down somewhat. 

Which is why she nearly fainted when she heard a scratchy voice behind her.

“Alright, alright, sorry I’m late, there was a breach in one of the dimensions and the Centaurs went all drama queen and then the Goblins _freaked out_ and did anyone even fucking _ask_ me if I was still on vacation, which hello! I totally fucking was? No! Of course not! Nothing’s bloody sacred anymore, I fucking swear.”

 


	12. Not really an answer

Hermione whipped around, her wand raised and poised to strike. There was a… creature in the middle of the bathroom. She’d never seen anything like it. It looked… slightly humanoid. In that it had a head, two arms and two legs. But it was about as tall as a goblin, and its body was covered with thin white fur. What she could see of its skin was… blue.

“Uhm… hello? Who are you?” she asked carefully.

It was inside Hogwarts, which meant it was either safe, like the house elves, or very, very dangerous. Like the troll.

“I’m your Guide!” it said cheerfully, like _that_ explained anything.

“I… don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t!” it answered, showing her a very sharp looking set of teeth. “I haven’t explained anything.”

She was interrupted from asking more by Harry’s voice.

“Hermione, please open the door, we know you’re in there!”

Should she let them in? Would the creature react violently?

“By all means, let your friends in.” it said laying back and plopping on a small fainting couch that appeared behind him “They must be worried.”

Well, this was bound to take their mind off of her, that was for sure. She dismantled the wards and a harried looking set of Gryffindors walked in.

She looked pointedly at the creature and then at them, waiting for their reaction. There was none.

“Are you ok?” Harry asked.

Ron was next to him, his hands on his hips, an uncertain expression on his face.

She frowned. She looked at the creature again, but it was just looking at the three of them, grinning.

“Oh, they can’t see me.” he told her.

“Hermione?” Ron asked this time.

Her eyes snapped back to him. They really couldn’t see it? They also seemed to not hear it. Which was a whole different type of charm.

“I’m fine. Don’t you notice anything?” she said gesturing around the bathroom. Maybe it was wearing a glamour. Maybe it was Dissilusioned? Did magical creatures even use spells like wizards? She suddenly realized she had no idea. She knew house elves didn’t use any kind of words, but were they casting non-verbally or did they truly use magic in a completely different way?

“Uhm...” Ron said bewildered, looking at Harry for help “Is this like when you asked us if we noticed anything different about your hair…?”

“No.” she ground out.

The creature snickered.

“Because, we didn’t mean to upset you that one time.” Ron went on, with a quickly nodding Harry next to him.

“It’s not...”

“And your hair looks fine to us, honest, I mean... I mean great! It looks great! Right Harry?...”

“Right!”

“This is not about my bloody hair.” she snapped.

“Oh… ok…” answered Harry.

“One of you cast Revela.” she told them. Maybe that would help.

They looked at her strangely, but did it anyway.

“Anything?” she asked.

“No...” Harry answered, now looking worried “What’s this about, Hermione?”

“Try Revela Totalus.” she said.

They cast it, looked around themselves, totally missing the white and blue creature lounging not two feet from them. It snickered again. They looked at her expectantly.

“I...” she said swallowing thickly “I could have sworn there was someone here...”.

Maybe… maybe there was no creature. Maybe it was just another hallucination. She felt a strangled whimper of hysteria trying to escape her lips, but she held on to her composure like it was the last shred of dignity she had. She was definitely loosing the plot.

She looked at little thing again and it winked at her. Circe’s fucking tits… it looked so… so _real_. It even had whiskers, for the love of God.

“Right… Look, what we want to know is why you started screaming in the middle of lunch like the castle was on fire.”

Now, that stung.

“Really, Harry? Really? Do you actually think I’d start screaming in the middle of The Great Hall if I thought the castle was on fire?”

“Oh... Ok, no, you’re right. You’d probably be the most collected one of us.” he answered sheepishly.

“Thank you.” she said, a little appeased.

“So what happened then?”

“Oh, I… I just… thought I… saw something...”

“Thought you saw what?”

“A… a… bug…?” she said helplessly.

“For the love of Hera...” the creature rolled it’s eyes.

“A bug.” Harry answered flatly. “A bug like the bugs we spend hours cutting and grinding and handling all through Potions that don’t even make you flinch, that kind of bug?”

Ugh. She really needed better lies.

“Look, I really can’t explain it alright? I thought I saw something, it scared the living daylights out of me, it was probably a Confundus gone awry, let’s just leave it at that.”

“I bet it was one of the Slytherins.” Ron said darkly.

Harry was frowning. She could see the concern in their eyes. They wouldn’t let this go easily. To be fair, she had made quite a spectacle of herself earlier.

“I’m not sure who or what it is, alright?” she said tiredly. She really didn’t want to add to their problems. “I’m sure everything’s going to be fine. I’ll just be more careful, maybe I’ve just been a little distracted lately.” She hadn’t, but there was no point in hashing it out.

Harry didn’t look convinced.

“Alright.” he said “Are you going down to the Chamber after classes?”

“Yeah, I have a few things to work on.”

“Alright, we’ll see you in the common room later tonight then.”

They all left and when she turned to close the door on the creature, it was gone.

 

* * *

 

By the time she made it down to the Chamber it was already four o’clock and she only had two hours before dinner. She’d found a book on mind curses in the Restricted Area and had snuck it out. She fervently hoped she’d find something useful. She’d been browsing the glossary when a familiar voice made her heart leap into her throat again.

“You’re not cursed, you know.” it said.

She resolutely ignored it and went back to reading.

“And you’re not going to find anything helpful in that book either.”

She refused to look at it or acknowledge it in any way. She would not talk to a figment of her imagination, she wouldn’t. She felt it move out of her peripheral sight and almost sighed in relief, thinking it had disappeared. No such luck.

“You know, this is a really unfortunate choice for a workroom.” it went on, moving about the chamber. She cast it a furtive look. It was examining one of the snake heads. “So many dark things happened here, so many traumas… they leave a trace, you know. In the energy of a place. You should at least do a cleansing.”

A cleansing? Energy?

“It’s oppressive.” it concluded.

Of course it was oppressive, it was the bloody Chamber of Secrets. Yes, she’d felt the weight of it as soon as she’d entered. Like a pressure on her skull and a shiver between her shoulder blades. But what the hell could _she_ do about it?

“It’s because of the preservation charms.” it went on. “It prevents the energy from renewing itself naturally. Death and people and magic leave a trace, but in normal circumstances, it’s not as strong or as lasting. This room, though… Nothing ever found peace here, Hermione...”

She felt a shiver run down her nape. The creature suddenly appeared right before her on the desk, sitting cross legged and she startled back.

“You should do a cleansing.”

“You’re not real.” she whispered.

“Aren’t I?”

“You’re not. You’re just a byproduct of the curse. Another hallucination.”

“They aren’t hallucinations, Hermione.”

“Stop saying my name like that.”

She couldn’t seem to stop her hands from shaking and she couldn’t seem to speak louder than a whisper. She noticed the creature had large, black eyes and they had no pupils.

“Like what?” it said, tilting its head to the side.

“Like you know me.”

“But I do know you.”

She said nothing.

“I know your name and how you take your tea. I know your parents and Harry and Ron and everyone you’ve ever known. I know what you think about when no one’s there.”

She felt her pulse in her ears.

“You’re just in my imagination. You’re not real. I’m actually talking to myself.” she closed her eyes and willed herself to breathe calmly. This was just the curse. She would find out what the hell it was and she would find a counter curse or a potion or a ritual or… or something! And everything would be alright.

“Well, that would mean that I only know what you know.” the creature spoke again and she opened her eyes.

“You know everything I know, because you’re a figment of my own mind. You don’t scare me.”

Of course it did.

“I don’t want to scare you.”

“What do you want then?”

Why was she still talking to it? She should go upstairs, have dinner, go to training, take a shower. Just ignore it until she could find a cure for it.

“I want to guide you.”

“I don’t need guidance from a curse wound.”

“Ouch.” it said, grinning “I’m not a curse wound. And I’m not a figment of your imagination.”

“Sure.” she said and decided enough was enough. If she wasn’t able to do any proper research tonight, shed leave it for tomorrow. She got up and started packing back her bag.

“If your theory is correct, which it isn’t, than, as I was saying, I should only know what you know. Let’s see, what could I possibly tell you that you don’t know, but could verify?” it said tapping its chin with a knobby blue finger. “Oh, I know! Your friend Harry. He’s gay.”

“What?!” she sputtered.

“Ask him.”

“I’m not going to ask Harry if he’s gay! That would be incredibly rude and invasive! Not to mention, he’s smitten with Ginny.”

“Is he?”

“Yes. He is.”

“Alright, let’s go with that. Ask your friend Harry if he’s as smitten with Ginny Weasley as you think he is.”

“No.”

“He’s gay, he fancies that blonde Slytherin, what’s his name and he doesn’t even realize it. He’s been angsting about it for weeks.”

“Malfoy?!! Draco Malfoy?!!! Ha! That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard! They can’t stand each other, they’ve been at each other’s throats since we were eleven! And the bastard’s a Death Eater wannabe!”

“Ask.” the creature grinned.

“I intend to do nothing of the sort. Just leave me alone.”

She put her bag on her shoulder and left the chamber without looking back. She could hear the creature’s snickering all the way to the exit. She really needed to have her head examined. Oh, wait. She’d done that already. Hadn’t helped!

“Ugh!” she groaned disgustedly. What the hell was she going to do?

 

 

 

 

 

 


	13. Revelations

She went back to watching Snape everyday. It had become so ingrained in her daily habits it was almost therapeutic. Like her morning coffee.

She wasn’t being blatant about it. She didn’t stare at the man. But she was aware of him, always. She sensed when he would walk into a room, or leave one, she paid attention to his schedule and whether he waived from it. She started noticing small things about him, that she’d never have paid attention to before. Like the clothes he wore, his shoes. The way he ran a hand through his hair when he was tired, or the way he meticulously cleaned his quill after using it. His five o’clock shadow and how it made his jaw look like it was cut from stone. She tried guessing how many identical, pristine, white shirts he owned.

She studied research journals and was bored to tears in class. She checked on her parents and spoke to them on the phone. She practiced with Harry and Ron in the Chamber until they were all sweaty and exhausted and sore, then she took a shower, wrote whatever homework she had and went to punch a bag for another hour in the gym. She found the routine made her tired enough to get a few decent hours of uninterrupted sleep a night.

Almost a week went by. She was in her bed, reading an article in The Economist and browsing through pictures of The Great Canyon when her little fantasy of having day-dreamed the whole bloody ordeal from a weak prior went arse over kettle.

“So did you ask him?”

Her hands froze mid-air and her breath stopped. Shit.

The creature was there again, bouncing on Lavender’s bed. Shit, shit, bloody fucking _shit_!

“You didn’t.” it sighed dramatically. “Well, suit yourself.”

Silence followed, interrupted only by the shuffling noises the creature made. She was not going insane. She was not going insane. She was not going...

“Aren’t you even a little bit curious to know what’s been happening to you?”

And wasn’t that the question.

Truthfully, she had two options here. Either start talking back to the thing. And really, was it so very different from talking to herself? Or Crookshanks? Sane, normal people talked to themselves or their pets all the time, didn’t they?

Yeah, except usually the pets don’t talk back.

Or she could just continue ignoring it and hope it might go away. Even though she’d already tried that and it hadn’t worked.

Reaching for all her supposed Gryffindor courage, she looked the thing right in it’s bottomless, pitch black eyes.

“Alright, talk.” she told it.

It grinned at her with all its teeth and she fought an impulse to shudder.

“You’re The Seer.”

“The what?”

“The Seer. Don’t tell me you don’t know what a Seer is, what do they teach you in this school?”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re on about.”

“You.are.The.Seer.” it said emphatically, gesturing with it’s tiny, knobby hands. “The Link Between the Planes, The Reader of the Records, The... You honestly have no idea what a Seer is?”

“No.” she said.

She’d never heard of anything like it.

“Well, the last time your soul was here _was_ more than a hundred and fifty years ago… And humans have exceptionally short memories.”

“The last time…?”

The creature sighed, looking at her with pity.

“You will look this up in that spectacularly useless library you have downstairs.”

“The library isn’t...”

“Whatever.” it said, putting its hand up. “I’m sure there are plenty of books, once you know what to look for.”

“Which is?”

“You will find many interpretations, opinions and treatise on the matter, but, to put it shortly, a Seer is a person with a deeper connection to the other planes of existence than regular humans. It can be viewed as… a mission, really. A contract, if you will, that your soul took on several millenia ago. You are still fulfilling this contract.”

She was getting more agitated, the longer the thing talked. She didn’t think she could avoid the reality any longer. She was going crazy. Literally mad as a fucking Hatter. Completely off her rocker. In-fucking-sane.

“You’re not going crazy.” the creature told her sternly. “I mean, you might, but not just yet. Anyway. People believe a Seer is a person of considerable magical power, who also happens to posses the unique gift of seeing alternate courses of events, both in the past, in the future and in completely different timelines. I say unique because there is only one Seer in the world at any given time.”

“Alternate courses of events?”

“Yes. I don’t want to oversimplify things to the point of idiocy, so I won’t tell you you can see possible future events with some amount of accuracy, but that is how most people seem to view the connection you have.”

“Are you telling me I’m a bloody fortune teller?”

“Don’t be purposefully dense.”

“So what? Is it like Divination? Am I going to start spewing prophecies?”

“Wizards and witches who practice Divination and are able to give prophesies function in the same realm, but are very different from what you do.”

“So you’re trying to tell me that what I’ve been experiencing up until now, the… episodes... those are possible future events?”

“Not exactly. You haven’t opened your third eye yet, not to mention you haven’t come into your full power either.” Her _third eye_? What third bloody eye?! “So what you get now are brief flashes meant to steer you in the right direction. You are seeing… things that make it easier for you to understand what you are meant to do and who you are meant to do it with.”

“ _Excuse me_?”

Severus Snape. That’s who she’d seen. Severus fucking Snape.

“More than likely, judging from how it usually plays out, you’re seeing events from past lifetimes.”

“How it _usually plays out_? What does that even mean?”

“We do this rather regularly, you and I.” it said.

“I don’t understand.”

“As I told you before, your soul took on this contract. You are still fulfilling it. That is why there is only one Seer alive at any given time. Your soul cannot inhabit two bodies at the same time. I, for the time being, am your guide. This is not the first time we have had this discussion.”

“So wait, you’re saying that it’s not actually a gift at all, it’s rather just my soul, permanently reincarnating, over and over again?”

“Yes. But it is also a gift. The fact that you are the only one it has been bestowed upon does not make it any less of a gift.”

“But… but why?”

“Why what?”

“Why was I given this… this…?”

“I cannot presume to understand what sort of contract you have undertaken with the powers that be and for what reason. When you will fulfill it, the gift will pass on to someone else.”

“This is absolutely preposterous.”

Why was she even listening to this? It sounded like the most far-fetched, absurd thing she’d heard since… since magic. She sighed. She couldn’t go down that road. She’d read somewhere that this was how psychosis worked. It had an internal logic all on its own. The person suffering was always, always convinced what they saw or believed was real. There was…. There was no way to really tell, was there?

She looked down at her laptop and typed a quick search.

_**Psychosis** is an abnormal condition of the mind that results in difficulties telling what is real and what is not. Symptoms may include false beliefs and seeing or hearing things that others do not see or hear. Other symptoms may include incoherent speech and behavior that is inappropriate for the situation. There may also be sleep problems, social withdrawal, lack of motivation, and difficulties carrying out daily activities. _

Oh, God…

She started laughing hysterically. She was a textbook fucking psychotic.

Parvati walked into the room and gave her a strange look. She sat down on her own bed and started taking her shoes off. The creature was kneeling next to her, picking a strand of her hair and examining it closely.

“What’s so funny?” her room-mate asked, smiling.

Hermione couldn’t answer. She just laughed harder, uselessly wiping at her eyes while she felt her mind coming apart at the seams.

  


  


 

  



	14. The truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been an eternity since I updated, I know. I KNOW. But life is unexpected like that and, frankly, lately it decided to only surprise me with good things so I'm definitely not going to complain about it! :)))
> 
> As for this chapter, I am taking liberties with Severus's past to suit my purposes. And with his family :D 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it, and that I'll be able to post more regularly, but no promises about the schedule. The one thing I can tell you for certain is that I don't plan on abandoning any of my stories. 
> 
> I love you all to bits, please leave a comment on what you think of this story thus far and, if you like it, please leave me some kudos. I love Kudos! 
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> PS - I came back to this and made some edits and adjustments. While I was here I got inspired and added a bit of raunchiness of the male/male category. Ups! Enjooooy! :D

_Severus stared at the letter in front of him like it was suddenly going to sp_ _r_ _ing up and bite him in the face. It's funny how your life can be turned upside down and inside out in a matter of minutes. He’_ _d made it a point to avoid any sort of surprises in life,_ _but something like this hits you like a tone of bricks and leaves your mind numb to the implications._

 _His father’s lawyer had written. That was enough of an event all on it's own, except after what he’d just read,_ _it_ _seemed unexceptional in comparison._

_He was particularly aware of his surroundings, everything registered with alarming accuracy and it left him feeling raw and vulnerable. Like an exposed nerve. The way the dark green heavy curtains in the Common Room were moved back and forth by the draft. The way the leather in his chair creaked just the tiniest amount when he leaned back in it. The noises outside in the hall of the other students walking, talking and laughing. It was grotesque.  
_

_He felt the Universe should acknowledge his state of mind somehow. It seemed unbearably inappropriate that it didn't. There should be **something**... some sort of change… _ _some_ _terrified, stunned silence... things should just..._ _**stop** _ _in a moment like this... at least for a little while? Just so he might have the chance to... draw breath for a second._

 _Everything c_ _ouldn_ ' _t just go on like nothing_ _had_ _happened!_ _**Something** _ _had happened._

“ _Carl, I'm going over to the Great Hall, do you want anything?!” he heard Jerome shouting from one of the rooms down the hallway. Lucius always curled his lip every time a_ _S_ _lytherin raised their voices or shouted across a room to one another._ _The man_ _thought_ _it completely gauche,_ _and Severus didn’t have the inclination to point out that_ _not all Slytherins were raised with Lucius’s rules concerning decorum._

“ _Nah, mate, cheers!”_

_There had been a car accident and his parents were dead. His unborn, baby sister along with them._

“ _Alright, but don't think you can ask for half of what I get when I come back!”_

_His father had been driving drunk. They hit a tree. Caldwell, their lawyer, wrote that he'd been instructed to take care of things. Severus, apparently, was one of the things that needed taking care of._

_He stared at the letter again. He felt hollow. He wished he'd feel pain. He wished he'd feel distraught. He just felt... hollow. He hadn't spoken or seen his family in twelve years. They had packed... no, the house elf had packed a couple of suitcases for him one night and then they'd called him in his father’_ _s_ _office. Merlin, he hated that office. They told him he was going to a school near Berlin and that they expected him to do well there. His mother had been standing with one trembling hand on his father's shoulder, both of them behind the_ _large, central desk. He hated that_ _fucking_ _desk even more than he hated the office. His mother looked sad, he noticed, but she was sad so often, it didn't seem like anything out of the ordinary. He remembered asking them where Berlin was and if he would come home for the weekends. They told him he would be very busy studying from now on and that they'd talk about visiting after he got settled in. He'd thought Berlin was the name of one of the nearby villages._

 _They hadn't even bothered to take him to the International Portkey Station. Jarris, the butler, had done that. He'd taken him all the way to Germany, right up to his dorm door. Jarris had been the only living soul in that household who had any idea what his room at school looked like._ _He’d never seen his parents since. Not once.  
_

_And now they were dead. He kept repeating that to himself, hoping to get some reaction out of his brain and heart. But there was just an echo and the slight trembling of his fingers.  
_

_He remembered the day he received the letter from Caldwell announcing he was going to have a little sister. His mother, in some sort of warped impulse to connect to him or apologize had decided to name her Lilly, after his dear childhood friend, Caldwell wrote. He'd laughed until he'd cried at the absurdity of the situation and at the sick irony life kept throwing his way._

_And now she was gone_ _._ _Because his waste of a fucking alcoholic father had killed her._ _He couldn't muster any true feelings_ _of loss for_ _his parents' deaths, they were buried under too much hurt and anger, but that baby never getting a chance..._ _It made him furious. Another Lilly lost to him, this one not to his rival but to death itself. The fucking irony... He crumpled the letter, threw it in the fire and walked out of the Common Room._

 _Why did she have to die when_ _**he** _ _was the abomination and she_ _was_ _just an innocent little baby? Not even a baby yet!_ _She would have been born in three weeks._

 _He walked out of the castle ignoring the glances he got along the way. He moved briskly through the night, into the forest surrounding the gardens. He_ _found the clearing, put up his usual wards and started throwing hexes. The more he was at it, the more vicious they got. He felt his fury uncoil like a sleeping dragon and burn a trail from his gut to his heart. It was never far. Always just bellow the surface. All he had to do was relax his hold on it just a little and it sprung to life consuming everything in its path._

“ _Incendio!” he yelled._

_The wards absorbed the fire with a loud crack and it made him feel fractionally better._

“ _Incendio!” he yelled again, louder. And then again. And again. And again._

 _He lost count of how many times he cast it, but when he felt the wet grass soaking into the knees of his trousers he stopped, panting. He_ _lowered his arm and wiped at his face, almost surprised to find tears streaking down his cheeks. He hadn’t even felt them fall.  
_

_The panting turned into sobbing and he started hitting the ground with his fists, tearing out entire patches of grass like a madman. There was a small corner of his mind that was quietly assessing what he was doing. He felt dissociated  and strange, like he was watching himself have a mental breakdown from the outside, while still having the mental breakdown. It took him a long time to stop crying. It left him exhausted but quiet and still. Calmer. The hollow feeling had turned into a fist tightly wrapped around his heart and it bloody hurt. It hurt when he breathed, it hurt when he thought about it and it didn't feel like it was going to leave him anytime soon._

_He took down his wards and sat down heavily, his back to a tree. More than half an hour passed but he was in no hurry to get up. He was exhausted.  
_

_He heard footsteps from his right, but he didn't open his eyes._ _Lucius_ _stopped a few feet away from him and was silent for a long time._

“ _Are you all right?”_

_What a dumb question. And yet he felt e little better that at least someone had bothered to ask it, even if he knew for a fact Lucius didn't care._

“ _Fine.” he said._

“ _What are you going to do?”_

 _Severus_ _gave him a look but the blonde didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed_ _._ _F_ _or all_ _of_ _Lucius’s ingrained manners,_ _apparently_ _he didn’t give a single damn about personal_ _boundaries or reading other people’s letters when it suited him_ _. A bit of a bastard, but the only friend Severus had at the moment and beggars can't be choosers.  
_

_What Lucius actually meant with his question was what Severus was going to do about The Mark._ _Lucius knew the situation with his family, there was no point in sugarcoating the truth._

“ _My tuition has been paid for in advance for my whole stay, as well as for school supplies. Father left me some money to do with as I please after school. There was never any discussion concerning any further contact after my coming of age.”_

 _Which was in a week from Saturday. They had never wanted to hear or set eyes on him again. Wasn't it funny that they'd actually gotten their wish in the end?_ _He’d laugh if he weren’t so bone tired._

“ _I see.” Lucius said without any inflection. "I'm sorry to hear that..." he added.  
_

_It made Severus raise his eyes to him and see the way Lucius was looking at him. Ah._

_The other man came closer and raked his hand through Severus' hair. It made him close his eyes. No, beggars can't be choosers. Lucius might have psychopathic tendencies and he might be a bastard, but he was loyal in his own way and he sucked cock like a god._

_"You know..." Severus said getting up from the floor and pinning the blonde to the tree with his body "... you don't have to pretend to care about my feelings in order to get me to fuck you."_

_He licked a trail up the column of the other man's neck and felt him shudder._

_"No...?" Lucius said hoarsely._

_"No." Severus answered biting the side of his neck and making him buck and groan "No, all you have to do is ask."_

_"Oh..."_

_"So ask me."  He continued, turning the other man to face the tree trunk "Nicely. Now."_

_He felt Lucius shudder again and saw him grip the bark convulsively._

_"Please..." Lucius whispered hoarsely "Please, fuck me..."_

_"Good."_

She came back to herself with a start. She was in Herbology, holding a root above a pot, about to plant it. She put it down with shaking hands and breathed steadily, reciting pi's digits until it stopped feeling like the room was about to collapse in on itself. 

Shit. Bloody Severus Snape. 

She waited for the class to finish, walked out into the gardens and just kept on walking. She had an hour and a half for lunch.

She found the clearing with ease and even though she'd expected it, it still made her heart rate go up. She summoned the memory of Snape putting up the wards and it came to her with no difficulty, along with the knowledge of what each one of them did and how to cast them. She put up all four of them and felt them settle.

“Wow.” she said aloud.

She’d never heard of any of these wards, she was completely certain of it. One was a much stronger version of Muffliato. She could scream her heart out and no one would hear a thing. One was meant to make the perimeter impervious to outside magic and her presence invisible. The third was meant to absorb hexes and it was… old. Very old. She felt it like an ache in the back of her throat. She would have to research it to find out more. What she knew at the moment was that she could throw a rather long list of jinxes and curses at it. For a while. It would only take so much, but what it could take was considerable. The last of them was to protect the plants and creatures inside the ward from destruction. She knew the ward’s weaknesses from Snape’s mind and knew not to cast towards the ground if she wanted whatever was beneath it to survive.

Taking a deep breath she yelled.

“Incendio!”

The ward absorbed it with a crack and she felt her face split into a grin. It actually worked!

“Reducto!” she cast and again the ward absorbed it, causing a different sound, just as loud.

She cast a few more curses, recognizing the feeling of liberation it gave her. It was almost as satisfying as punching the bag in the gym, although she still preferred that to this. She kept at it for a while, until she grew tired. The wards held, and no one came by to ask what the hell she was doing, even though it was a nice day out, it was lunch break and she knew for a fact this portion of the woods was frequently walked.

She took down the wards and stood still, deep in thought. The only logical explanation she had was that she’d somehow researched, learned, practiced and perfected the casting of these wards without remembering any of it until that very morning, for no apparent reason whatsoever. It was such a remote possibility it was laughable. But the wards were obviously real. She’d felt the magic of them. The other possible explanation, the not so logical one...

She took the fastest route to the Library, decisive and apprehensive at the same time. She’d postponed the task for two days already, terrified of finding out just how deep into insanity she’d sunk. It only took five minutes to track down the catalog with the books on the subject “Seer”. There were literally dozens of them and Hermione stared at them in both horror and elation. Because, fuck, she might actually not be crazy! But also, fuck, what exactly was she then?

 _Prominent Seers throughout History_ , one label said. _The Goblin Wars and Prophesies, How the Seer Influenced The Century’s Most Dangerous Conflict_ , was another one. _Seers, blessed or cursed?,_ the third.

She sat down gingerly and opened them one by one.


	15. The pain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I'm not dead! Heh. Nor have I abandoned the story. I just only write when I'm inspired and have the time, which aren't always aligned. So... yeah. Hope you enjoy! 
> 
> ps - I love you all to bits!
> 
> pps - If you can find it in your hearts to send some feedback, it would be greatly appreciated!
> 
> Oh, WARNINGS: Torture. Threats of rape. Implied rape to a third party. Sort of. Anyway, some nasty stuff ahead.

Despite the tacky title, “ _Seers, blessed or cursed?_ _”_ turned out to be the most informative of all the books she consulted, and she consulted quite a few after browsing through the first three. She only had forty-five minutes until the beginning of the DADA class, but still she managed to gain a lot in the short time and... It was bad. Really, really spectacularly bad.

No one seemed to be able to agree on what exactly a Seer was, nonetheless there was a lot of hype around the discovery of a new one. Typical. When it happened, the whole wizarding world celebrated. Countries sent representatives for formal introductions, entire diplomatic parties in some cases. China had a bloody festival, for the love of God! Because there was only one Seer alive in the world at any given time and most countries had a vested interest in his or her favor not to mention in proving their status among themselves. Venezuela had had a temple built for its first Seer, in the 12th century, and it still functioned as a diplomatic residence to this day. A temple! It was absurd, obviously, but people seemed to be inordinately excited whenever the Seer was born from among them. England had only had the honor once and frankly Hermione found the matter debatable. He was reported to have lived around 500 BC. He couldn't even be technically called English. He was a Celtic Briton from a long line of Icelandic shamans whose tribe had migrated to the island some two hundred years prior.

It all sounded ludicrous to Hermione, that one person could create such a stir internationally but then she remembered how Muggles acted every time a new royal was born or a royal wedding happened. The royals themselves were nothing special, they were just regular people, but they represented something, they were a symbol and they were celebrities and people had this unquenchable curiosity when it came to them. It made Hermione a little uncomfortable to think that there was even a slim possibility that people would look at her like she was... like she was special just because she’d been born. She suddenly had a whole new appreciation for what Harry went through.

And speaking of being born. How exactly did people ascertain without a slither of a doubt that someone was indeed a Seer and not an impostor. She had no doubt there must have been plenty who tried. She had just ten minutes left. She browsed furiously through two more books, went back to another one, cross referenced something and then finally found a chapter on what she was looking for. Apparently there were at least half a dozen spells that could be used to reliably identify a Seer. At some point the practice of checking if a child was a Seer or not had been so widespread, in certain corners of the world the spells had been incorporated in the baptizing rituals for infants. She'd found refferences to at least three books that contained recognized incantations and it was the first thing she was planning on doing that night after dinner.

Determined and with a clear purpose in mind, Hermione walked out of the library and headed to class.

"So!" a cheery voice said from next to her. "You finally looked!"

"I did." She answered the creature without looking at it.

"Good. I was getting tired of the _I'm going insane_ babble."

As a matter of fact, it was much easier for Hermione to believe she was indeed going insane than that she _was_ a Seer. She didn't feel special or particularly powerful. She was just a perfectionist, overachieving, workaholic muggleborn with a chip on her shoulder. She knew this. But a Seer? An internationally recognized witch capable of seeing into the future or alternate timelines or universes? Uhm... no. Just... what? But if there was one thing she had come to rely on and trust implicitly it was magic and magic was going to give her the answer tonight and she would finally know, damn it.

"You'll need to speak to the Guardian soon."

Oh, and then there was this nonsense. The Guardian. Every time a Seer was mentioned, a Guardian wasn't far behind. This person didn't seem to be a guardian in the legal meaning of a guardian to a minor, but as Hermione understood it more like a guard? Security of some sort?

"What does this guardian do exactly?"

"He or she is your anchor. Your strength. Your light in the darkness and your hope when there is none left."

Hermione raised an eyebrow and let the silence do the commentary for her.

"Again then. What does this person do, exactly?"

A huff and an indignant roll of one shoulder.

"The Guardian guards against danger. In whatever form that may come. And they are also an anchor for your power."

At this she stopped walking and corralled the creature into a nook in the hallway.

"What do you mean anchors my powers? I've never heard of magical folk needing any other anchor for their power except wands."

"I don't mean you magical power. But your gift takes a toll on the mind and the core. Once you come of age and into your full powers as a Seer, the Guardian's magical core anchors you to this plane of existence so you may always be able to come back. Without it you can easily become lost and fail to return."

Hermione felt a chill down her spine and the hairs on the back of her forearms stand on end.

"And what happens then?"

"Your soul would wonder untethered through universes, times and dimensions while your body stays but an empty husk here, unable to die on its own unless killed by someone else. A permanent soulless sleep that would last as long as your body could sustain itself. Only upon your true death would you be able to reincarnate again."

"That sounds less than ideal."

"Quite."

"So how do I find this Guardian?".

"Your souls have been bonded for thousands of years. You have lived hundreds of lives together and fate always finds a way to bring your paths together. I suspect that wherever he or she is, they are near. And you should already know their identity anyway. The Guardian is always among the first visions you have."

Oh, no.

"That's... That can't be right."

No, it couldn't be. It was absolutely preposterous! Ridiculous. She felt wave of dizziness overcome her and she had to grab the wall for support. It couldn't possibly be.

The creature smiled a smile with too many teeth and chuckled.

"It's not always someone you are close to or like. Not in the beginning."

Close to or like? How about the one person who absolutely and completely despised her?! How about the most difficult, unreasonable, arrogant bastard she had ever met?!!

"But... but... we hate each other!" She whispered desperately to the creature.

It shrugged and started disappearing into thin air.

"It is what it is. You will have to make it work."

The last thing to disappeare was the creature's grin and Hermione felt like kicking its teeth out. Repeatedly.

"You've got to be kidding me!"

* * *

 

She walked into the classroom late and in her hurry stumbled on the threshold.

_Just as she lifted her eyes, muttering angrily, she caught a flash from the corner of her eye and barely managed to cast a nonverbal Protego in time to avoid the purple looking hex flung her way. She evaded three more before finally managing to roll behind a tree, panting. Shit. Where the hell was she?_

_The sound of a broken branch made her crouch even lower and circle the tree a little. A forest. It was a forest and it was cold. They were closing in on her. She didn’t know who they were or what they wanted but they certainly didn’t seem friendly. She suspected more than two but she didn't have time to figure it out before she was hit with something burning in the back. It felt like agony and it spread so quickly she almost didn't have time to scream. Almost, because then she did and it seemed like she was never going to be able to stop because her veins were on fire and her heart was exploding and acid was crawling beneath her skin and please, God, was it ever going to stop?!!_

_It did, as sudden as it had started, and she kept convulsing, unable to control her limbs from erratically spasming. Someone grabbed her by the hair and pulled her up by it, head held back, exposing her neck. It hurt, but all she managed was a grunt. Her throat felt raw and her vision was spotty._

_"What do we have here?"_

_The man looked completely unremarkable, except for the psychotic grin on his face._

_"Can we just take this one back and collect the money?" A bored female voice sighed. "I'm hungry, I want lunch and we can always play with whatever we catch tonight."_

_"But I like how this one screams." The man growled._

_"You always like how they scream and they always do." another irritated male voice said. "But this time I'm with Cartwind. I want lunch, this was only supposed to be a strategy meeting, not a hunt and we always catch something in the evenings anyway."_

_"And your brother almost had to bribe you to join us, you ungrateful fucking prick." The one holding Hermione by the hair said. "Oh, I don't knoooow... What if the Snatchers in West Harrow are better what if they have better scores than you?" he mimicked mockingly. He spat on the ground and some of it landed on Hermione's hand._

_"There ain't no Snatchers with better rates than us in all of outer London, cause I have the best connections you fucking pricks! Almost seven fucking mudbloods a week!"_

_He looked at Hermione with hunger and she felt like he'd spit on her again._

_"Which is why we can afford some playtime once in a while..."_

_Hermione fought the impulse to cower and tried to Accio her wand. No luck. The man placed the tip of his wand at her neck, inside the collar of her jacket and sliced through all of her clothing in one swipe, leaving her front exposed. It was supposed to be frightening and degrading and she was supposed to be paralyzed with fear, and of course it was absolutely terrifying. But Hermione was used to acting when terrified and she also knew that whatever happened here was bound to be ten times worse the longer it lasted, so she would make it quick. Quick as lightening, in fact._

_Her hand shot between the man's legs, grabbed his balls and penis and squeezed as hard as she could. He screamed and bent at the waist, giving her the perfect angle for an elbow to the temple, which she delivered with relish. Had he been alone, she might have managed quite admirably, but unfortunately he was not and the second he dropped to the ground she was hit with a vicious Incarcerous. The ropes wound mercilessly around her, and she barely had room to breathe._

_"That's what happens when you underestimate a woman." the bored female voice smirked from somewhere to the left. " I keep telling you idiots."_

_"You filthy fucking cunt..." the first one growled, getting up with difficulty and pinning Hermione with a hateful look. "Crucio!"_

_The agony hit her again, this time starting in her stomach and she quickly lost control of her bladder. The pain was like nothing she had ever experienced before and left room for no thoughts or prayers. She might have begged them to stop had she been able to think anything beyond the agony. She had a single clear moment when she was certain she might have done absolutely anything, said absolutely anything just to make the agony stop but then her mind was lost to it and all she was able to do was scream. The thing that makes the Cruciatus Unforgivable and different from the many, many curses that can cause unbearable pain and permanent nerve damage, is the fact that it lasts even after the actual curse ends. The memory of it has a way of lingering in the bones and in the flesh and just the memory of it, the possibility that it might be felt again can sometimes drive a person mad. It is a torture that, once started, can last for a lifetime. Thus, unforgivable._

Hermione came back to herself sitting on the floor, her back to a wall and a large desk in front of her. Snape was on one knee next to her, a strange expression on his face. She remembered walking into his class. She had no idea what had happened while she'd been in the forest but she felt the wetness beneath her skirt and she covered her face. Never in her life had she felt so humiliated.

"Oh, God..."

"Don't worry about that." he said in a surprisingly soft tone. A flick of his wand and everything felt dry again. "There. All gone. Do you know who I am?"

"Severus..." she whispered. "Severus Snape."

"Good. Can you tell me where you are?"

"Hogwarts."

"Good."

She pressed her hand to her mouth, nodding her head quickly, desperately trying not to start crying hysterically. Yes, it was good. Good that she wasn't in the forest anymore, good that a capable, non-psychotic adult was here. Good that she hadn’t been there for the rest of the torture and rape that she was certain had followed. She felt a wave of nausea and heaved. Snape produced a small basin and she threw up her lunch, coughing and spitting. He handed her a glass of water and she cleared her mouth and spit again. She really had no idea how in the world she would be able to look this man in the eye ever again. He vanished everything and continued to sit next to her in silence, like nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

The classroom was quiet and she realized she had no idea how much time had passed, whether class had ended or hadn't even begun and Snape had sent everyone in the hallway. Had she screamed? Spoken? She had absolutely no clue and the thought was terrifying.

"The rest of your class is engaged at the other end of the room and there is a sound dampening charm around us." Snape said in the same soft voice as before. Ah. So that's why everything was so quiet. She blinked at him and wondered at how gentle and non threatening he suddenly was. The man who could reduce students to tears with a look.

"I have summoned Madame Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall, they should be here shortly."

She noted how careful he was about keeping distance between them, moving slowly and as little as possible. His wand was nowhere to be seen and both his hands were kept in her line of sight. Had she said anything to elicit this kind of behavior?

It was the second time he found her in a state. Questions were sure to be asked and she had no idea how to answer any of them. All she wanted was to have a long shower and hide from the entire world. She wanted her bed from back home and she wanted her mother and she was probably never going to see either of those ever again. Her mother had no idea… she had no idea that Hermione was anything else except happy and in school. She didn’t know dark wizards even existed, nevermind the horrors they were capable of and that was a good thing, certainly. Her mother had no business worrying about Deatheaters and Voldemort. There was nothing to be done about it anyway. And Hermione understood that, had done anything in her power to ensure that neither of her parents would ever be involved in this madness of course she had. She would do it again. She didn’t regret a single moment. Except… Except that it left Hermione feeling... Merlin, she felt so alone and miserable and abandoned she could hardly breathe. She had absolutely no one except for Harry and Ron and she didn’t feel like she could discuss what she’d just gone through with any of them. With anyone really. What would she even say? How would she even put it without being thrown into the psychiatric ward? They had left no physical mark on her. She felt bile in the back of her throat again. And they would never be held accountable for what they had done. Not in this world, the one where she was suffering in. There was absolutely no chance for the monsters to ever be held accountable for torturing her because as far as anyone here was was concerned it hadn’t even really happened.

She felt sweat break out on her forehead, her legs and arms went numb and she... she really couldn't breathe...

"Miss Granger, look at me."

She looked at him, but the air simply wasn't there anymore and she started panicking even faster. Someone had cursed the oxygen away.

"Miss Granger, I want you look at me and take my hands, alright?"

She gripped his hands like they were the last lifeline she had and she tried to communicate with her eyes that there was something wrong with her lungs because they were _useless_ , but she couldn't get the words out.

"Alright, that's good, look at me, now we're going to get up from the floor and walk for a bit. Just a few steps. Good, very good, you're doing very good. No, never mind them, look at me. Here we go, into the hallway, much better and cooler here. Yes, very good. Now I want you to breathe in time with me, alright? Deep breath in... Good. And hold it... Now release. You're doing very well. Let's try again. Deep breath in... hold... and release. Very good."

They did this a few more times and Hermione felt the dizziness and feeling of faint slowly leave her, her breathing stabilizing. Snape had eyes the color of dark chocolate and lashes that went on for days.

"That's very good. Now here, drink this."

He produced a small vial from his pocket and she recognized the familiar citrusy smell of the Calming Draught. She drank a mouthful gratefully and only when all her muscles started to relax did she realize how tense she had been.

Madame Pomfrey and McGonagall arrived then and took her to the infirmary. The draught had worked quickly and efficiently and she wasn't able to focus on what Snape told the two women, but when she reached the infirmary bed she sank into it with a sigh and went to sleep before her head hit the pillow.

\--------------------

Her first thought upon waking up was: there's a variant of the future where groups of wizards calling themselves Snatchers catch, torture and then sell up to ten muggleborns a week. She didn’t know who they were selling them to and she didn’t know why but just the fact that it was happening was alarming. If the practice was so widespread and went unchecked it meant it was either legal or silently ignored by the Government. Neither possibility was very encouraging.

Her second thought was: are we really doing this then? Are we really accepting the possibility that you are...

"Ah, Miss Granger, you are awake."

Madam Pomfrey's voice had the gentle yet firm tone of all medical professionals everywhere. It soothed Hermione because it was a tone she was well familiar with.

"How do you feel?"

Hermione had no idea how she felt.

"Alright, I suppose. Thank you."

She sounded like she'd swallowed broken glass and washed it down with a bottle of whiskey. Pomfrey did a few diagnosis spells and then sat down in the chair, looking at Hermione.

“My dear, I want you to know that there is absolutely nothing that you cannot speak to me about.”

Ah, so that was the route they would go with it. They thought she’d been attacked. Which, funny thing, she had!

“I am a certified physician and I have also studied the arts of mental healing practices.”

Of course, Hermione knew this. They had been told in first year that Madame Pomfrey was here as both doctor, nurse and counselor. And maybe Hermione would have liked talking to her, it was just that she didn’t feel like she could say anything that would lead to anything productive. So she just nodded and said nothing.

She continued to say nothing to McGonagall as well, despite her worried expression and she continued to say nothing to both Harry and Ron when they came. She just lay on the bed and counted the hours before they deemed her ready to go back to her dorm. What she really wanted was the Library, but it would have to wait.

 

 

 


	16. Worrying

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys!   
> I just wanted to let you know that, this being an AU, I am being very liberal with more than a few things, so please don't feel offended if they vary greatly from canon. Hermione's birthday is changed and I am pretty much ignoring the canon timeline entirely at this point. 
> 
> Also, I suppose this is turning out to be quite the long fic... When I put that slow build tag I wasn't kidding, huh?! Hahaha! I can't believe I've actually reached 25k and Hermione and Severus haven't even really talked to each other yet. Not to mention the plot hasn't even really begun yet. Jesus. :)))))))) I hope you guys don't mind. But I am actually writing this instinctively. So the story gets woven as I go along, with no actual predetermined plan. I sort of get into a scene and see where it takes me, if that makes any sense. 
> 
> Anyway! Thank you so, SO much for all your wonderful feedback, please don't hesitate to leave a comment or some kudos if you like anything and I will talk to you guys next time! 
> 
> XOXO

After  M adame Pomfrey did a few diagnostic spells on her that proved she was in perfect physical health, the doctor had no reason to keep her in the infirmary any longer and released her before dinner. She made certain to tell Hermione again that she would be available for chats anytime Hermione felt like it and that she should come back in a week’s time regardless. Just to talk and make sure everything was alright. 

Hermione went straight to the Library and took out the book with the incantations. She took it outside to Snape’s spot of the forest, cast the wards again and sat down to look through it thoroughly. The creature appeared as soon as she opened the covers.

“The best one to use would be Revelare oculis meis.” it provided

“Why?”

“It’s easy, straightforward and extremely accurate. It is also the one officially recognized in England.”

Hermione ignored him for a while, as she browsed through the book. After fifteen minutes, she was forced to admit that he had been telling the truth. Although rarely used anymore, the spell was indeed recognized by the British Ministry of Magic. Similar in origin to the trace put on underage magical children, it was apparently infallible. Hermione felt her hands become clammy and she took a deep breath. This was it. If she was the Seer, a purple aura would surround her. If not, a yellow one instead.  Straightforward indeed, she thought. The entire incantation was  _ R _ _ evelare oculis meis, _ _ revelare animae meae _ . The wand movement was a bit complicated and she practiced it for a few minutes. The creature helped with directions. 

When she was confident she could reproduce the spell accurately, she got up from the floor and pointed her wand at her left arm. 

“Alright, this is it, Hermione...” she told herself quietly. 

“ _R_ _evelare oculis meis,_ _revelare animae meae.”_

Instantly, a deep purple light surrounded her and she felt her pulse in her throat. She looked at her hands and body bewildered and speechless.

“Fuck...” 

* * *

By the  next day she’d cast the spell dozens of times, as well as all the other ones she was able to find from books. They all revealed the same thing and she was slowly starting to believe that it wasn’t, in fact, some kind of product of psychosis but the truth. She actually was the current Seer.  It boggled the mind.  The things she’d seen had been visions of past lives, the future or alternate timeline events. She had a white, furry,  invisible guide  of unknown origin or species and a Guardian she would need to approach and convince into working with her. A Guardian who was her... soulmate.  It was so bizarre, some days she woke up and felt like she’d fell down her very own rabbit hole. 

“Do souls only have one mate?” she asked the creature. “And what is your name, anyway? I need to call you something if this is to become a regular thing.”

T hey were on her bed with the curtains drawn and she was lazily practising Disillusioning herself.  It was early Wednesday morning and she’d have to go to breakfast in an hour. After that her first class of the day was DADA and she was... anxious about it to say the least.

“Souls can have many mates, but not at the same time. Sometimes mates change, sometimes they stay the same always, it’s just like with human relationships.”

“Right...” she said dubiously.

“And I’m afraid you don’t have the correct vocal chords to pronounce my real name properly. So you can call me whatever you like.” 

“Alright... I’ll call you Crooks then.”

“Short for your cat’s name, Crooks?” he squeaked indignantly. 

“Exactly. So if people hear me talking to thin air, I’ll just tell them I was talking to my cat. Sane people talk to their cats all the time, right baby?”

C rookshanks miaued from the foot of the bed and stretched his paws, yawning.

“Unbelievable.” he grumbled to himself. “It would be a lot more useful if you learned to not reveal so much on your face and to simply not address me when in company.”

Hermione shot him a withering look.

“That would be a lot easier if you didn’t spend the entire time we _are_ in company trying to provoke me.”

“You need to learn.” he went on undisturbed.

“Fine.”

“Have you spoken to the Guardian?”

“No...” 

“You should do it as soon as possible. Your birthday is fast approaching and he should be there for the transition.”

This was news to Hermione.

“Why does he need to be there?”

“When you come into the full extent of your powers, the amount of information you will receive will be overwhelming. Without his support you might not make it to the other side with your mind intact.”

“Wait, wait, what? What information?”

“It will not be conscious information. But your magical core will suddenly be linked to The Records, which contain all the information about all the souls, species, planets, times and dimensions in the Universe. It will feel overwhelming.”

“And you actually mean to tell me that I will have access to... to all of it? Just like that?”

“To a certain extent. Even some humans have learned to access the Records over the centuries, not to mention the entire branch of Divination is based on reading them. It isn’t as remarkable as you make it out to be. The difference between you and all of them, however, is your capacity to read the Records accurately. Seeing as they are extremely layered, interconnected and ever changing, interpretation of them can vary enormously. Thus very few people ever get it right. Humans, for example, can only ever access their own Records. Never those of another person. Witches and wizards can sometimes get glimpses of more, but it is very rare that information reaches this plane intact. Your connection is different, cleaner, more direct.”

“I have to tell you, I hear what you’re saying but I can’t really wrap my head around it. Quite frankly, I have no idea how any of this is supposed to work.”

“That’s alright. It will come naturally to you. You don’t actually have to have any knowledge, although the more experience you get, the easier it will become to navigate.”

“Right... and how does the Guardian factor into this equation again?”

“Your brain and body, as magical as they are, are still very much human. They can only sustain so much. If you want to make it out of the transition with your mind intact, you will need him to ground you.”

“And how will he know how to do that?”

“He doesn’t have to know anything. Your magical cores will bond over the process. Everything will be very natural.”

“That sounds... invasive.”

“To a certain extent. It is necessary.”

“Fucking fantastic... And what exactly does being a Guardian entail? What am I supposed to tell Snape he’s signing up for. If he agrees to sign up at all that is, which is highly unlikely.”

“The Guardian protects you and grounds you, although for the latter he only needs to be present when you come of age. After your cores will be bonded, it will happen automatically.”

“And the protection part? What does that mean exactly? How does it work?”

“Every time it is different. But you always end up finding a way to make it work, so stop worrying about it.”

Hermione had the distinct feeling there was something he wasn’t telling her, but she knew from experience that trying to pry it out of him was useless.  So she swalloed her questions and got up to go to breakfast.

* * *

They were working on the Protego charm. Hermione, Harry and Ron could by this stage  perform it  in their sleep,  so a ll they had to remember was to fail some of the time and appear to be stumbling in order to not draw attention to the mselves . Snape was circling the classroom like a lion prowling. Silent and dangerous.  Hermione was doing her best to ignore his presence, but she was failing miserably. She was distinctly aware of where he was at all times and her brain kept stumbling unto the fact that that man over there was her soulmate. Her  _ soulmate _ ! And she would have to tell him this with a straight face, without being thrown out of his office or expelled.  H ow would he react to the news? He wouldn’t believe her without proof, that was for certain. But would he become angry? Throw insults at her?  Yell?  He might very well refuse  to do it altogether . It was his right. 

Oh, God... How was she ever going to do this? 

Hermione didn’t have a lot of experience talking to boys, never mind grown men. And he was... certainly a man and not a boy. What would becoming her Guardian mean for his life?  Did he have a significant other? A lover? Would his potential relationship be affected by their bonding? Would other parts of his life be affected?  Had he taken the Mark after all? Had he been a Deatheater?  _ Was _ he... a Deatheater? She felt sick thinking about it. Her Guardian, the Deatheater.  How could he possibly be loyal to protecting her if he despised the very essence of what she was?  It didn’t bear thinking about. She would ask Crooks. 

G arland Wittcomb, her partner for the class exercise hurled a stumbling jinx her way and she threw up a shield with ease. Ups. She’d forgotten to verbalize it. They weren’t supposed to be able to do it non-verbally. She discreetly looked around herself to see if anyone had seen and her eyes connected directly with Snape’s. Dammit.  She tried acting like nothing had happened and made a show of casting the next three shields as clumsily as possibly and failed the third one completely. Another ten minutes and he put an end to the practical part of the class and they all sat down at desks to continue with a lecture. 

Hermione sat in her usual seat, next to Harry and Ron. They all looked at each other and smirked discreetly. Ron looked particularly proud and Hermione decided she was going to rub in the fact that, had they not practiced so much, he wouldn’t have such good results. He was going to hate it and it made her want to laugh. For all his laziness, Ron was extremely smart when he put in the work and she wasn’t about to let him forget it. 

She opened her notebook but, to her complete bewilderment, it wasn’t her writing on the pages. She looked more closely. They were potion ingredients and a recipe.

_ An extremely complicated,  ludicrously expensive, bound to be a complete waste of time of a recipe  and Severus felt the beginning of a headache in the back of his neck. He had no idea why The Dark Lord wanted him to attempt to make this farce of a potion, but he tried coming to terms with the inevitable punishment his failure would get him and just get on with it. It wasn’t like he could refuse anyway. He kept all of these thoughts safely inside the barrier of his Occlumency shields and bowed his head to the senseless, megalomaniac in front of him.  _

“ _Of course, my Lord.”_

“ _When do you think you’ll be done, Severus?”_

“ _Two weeks at most, my Lord.”_

“ _Good! Lucius will provide you with the ingredients. Make me an army, Severus.”_

“ _I will do my best, my Lord.”_

_ An army... build him a fucking army, he says. As if concocting a will repressing, brainwashing potion with long term effects was the work of a few days! As if Tiberius Gornfield, the imbecile behind this...  recipe , this... this insult to potion masters everywhere was anything but a charlatan and a crook!  As if t he man  had even an inkling of an idea of what he was talking about! There was a reason his book was self published and had never sold more than 200 copies and it wasn’t because he was some obscure, reclusive genius like the Dark Lord seemed to think he was. It was because the mockery of a book Severus now held in his hands and was carrying to his laboratory wasn’t even worth the bloody paper it was printed on! And good luck trying to change the Dark Lord’s mind once it was made!  An expert in the Dark Arts and a powerful wizard he may be, but he was no potions expert and Severus was frankly quite sick of these ideas the man got in the middle of the night after spending too much time in Lucius’s bloody fucking library!  _

“ _Ah, Severus! You’re back. How was it?”_

_ He’d made it all the way back to the Headmaster’s office on the wings of his fury and he dropped in one of the armchairs, flicking the bloody book on the floor behind him. Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled as his gently placed his hands on the desk in front of him. _

“ _You seem upset.”_

“ _Well, the prospect of impending punishment from a psychotic maniac can have that effect on anyone, Albus.” he growsed._

“ _Oh?”_

“ _He wants me to make him a potion. A complete joke of a potion that will not only_ **not work** , but will take me two bloody weeks to make at the ends of which he will surely decide to make an example out of my failure and it will be nothing short of excruciating.”

“ _Oh. I’m so sorry, Severus. Is there anything I can do to help?”_

_ He deflated instantly and that headache bloomed even fiercer at his nape. _

“ _No... no, of course there’s nothing you can do. I’m just exhausted and...” he made a gesture with his hands, meant to encompass everything else wrong with his life at the moment. Which was everything. He sighed heavily and sank deeper into the armchair._

_ It was going to be two very long weeks. _

She felt a jab in her side and came back to Harry looking at her questioningly. 

Oh. 

Oh, fuck. She’d had another one. 

She looked around the classroom to see if anyone except for Harry had noticed anything, but fortunately, no one had and Severus had his back to them and was writing something on the blackboard.

“Are you ok?” Harry whispered.

“Yes, sorry. Just a bit distracted. Did you ask me something?”

“I said Ron and I are going _downstairs_ before dinner.” 

Downstairs was code for the Chamber. 

“Alright, I’ll be there.” she nodded. 

Harry went back to his notes and Hermione looked up at Snape. Snape, her soulmate, the Deatheater, after all. Except not only that. Also Dumbledore’s man aparently.  A spy in Voldermort’s ranks. So he’d taken the Mark after all and somewhere along the way he’d changed sides. This put the incident in the Astronomy Tower in a new perspective, but Hermione wasn’t sure how she was going to reveal this to the boys without also revealing a lot of other things she’d rather not at the moment. Of course... she was going to have to eventually. She couldn’t even imagine their reactions when they found out. She didn’t think they would be terribly upset about the Seer part... but the Snape part? She just couldn’t see Ron and Harry interact with the Professor in any constructive way and she could not loose her best friends. She just couldn’t. Not after loosing her parents. She swallowed back the tears and the wave of despair that hit and resolved to think about all of it later. 

After all, there was no point worrying about things until she actually talked to Snape. And boy, was that going to be a conversation she wished she never had to have. 

  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  



	17. Where is the love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at me, being productive and shit! Hahaha! 
> 
> Love you guys,  
> xoxo

_Hermoine hadn't been there when it happened. The only Quidditch matches she watched these days were the finals for the House Cup every year, which were a requirement for all the faculty. Nevertheless she'd heard it so many times from so many different people in the last two weeks that she felt confident she could give a play by play account of the entire wretched event. It was horrid, to be sure. Three of the Ravenclaw players and two of the Slytherin ones had put together a series of jinxes and hexes so vicious on all of the Muggleborn player's brooms that no less than four of them had ended up in the hospital wing, one of which in critical condition. The amount of hatred necessary to bypass not only house rivalry but also Quidditch rivalry to unite against a fellow group of students like that was blood chilling._

_Upon further investigation, the staff had learned that the attackers were part of a teenage extremist group calling themselves Dawn of Dark. There were eight of them total. Neo Death Eaters, all from former Death Eater families, steeped in pureblood indoctrination since early childhood, for whom the end of the war and Voldermort's demise counted as nothing more than a lost battle in the ever on going war. Of course, they had no idea what real war was, nevermind how what they so viciously supported would truly impact Wizardkind. They'd been little more than toddlers when the war had ended. They didn't know what living in terror really meant. They advocated hate and segregation and meanwhile knew shit all about what they were really asking. It made Hermione's skin crawl._

_The time when students were in mortal danger on Hogwarts grounds was supposed to be long past. They'd all given enough blood, had lost more than enough people to see to at least that, certainly? It left her feeling angry and bitter and more than a little vengeful. She wanted to see the ones responsible arrested and brought to justice, she wanted them punished severely enough that no one would ever think to try something like it again and she wanted it all to be as public and as ugly as possible. She'd had no idea there was such a vast ocean of pure, clear, unadulterated fury right at the center of her heart._

_However, the evidence Hogwarts staff and the Aurors had been able to gather was all circumstantial and they could do little more than grind their teeth. Moreover, the families of the attackers had pulled forces together and managed to cover everything up so neatly and so quickly, it was impossible they'd all been unaware of what their dear progeny had been up to. It disgusted Hermione to such an extent it was the first time she had actually, truly considered simply leaving this God forsaken country to its bigots and its incompetent, corrupt officials and permanently relocating somewhere else._

_They were going to get away with it. Had already gotten away with it. She swallowed past the anger and drank some more coffee. It was a disgrace and no amount of thinking about it would solve anything, she knew it, but it chafed something horrible._

_She'd given so much to this school and to this world. She'd given her youth and her innocence and her blood, she'd abandoned her family, had almost given her life countless times and for what? So that a handful of xenophobic, racist assholes could get away with attempted murder on school grounds just because their families had influence and money and political connections? It was so fucking banal and cliché it bordered on obscene. She hadn't survived war and torture and persecution to see everything she'd fought for turned into a joke. She'd be damned if she let a bunch of snot faced, teenage bullies make a mockery of all the sacrifices they'd all made, of all the people who had given their lives fighting against mindless hate and terrorism. She stabbed one of her fries into the sauce and ate it viciously. She'd find a way to see them pay. She had no idea how just then, but she'd think of something, she always did. They'd regret the day they decided to raise their wands and terrorize fellow students. So they thought being a Death Eater was fun, did they? Thought of themselves as some sort of bloody revolutionaries, no doubt? Minerva might not be able to do more than take standard disciplinary action, but Hermione had learned a thing or two surviving a year as a fugitive and her morals had long ago ceased being divided into black and white._

_"You're brooding." drawled a familiar voice from the doorway._

_"Takes one to know one, I'm sure." she grouched not looking up._

_"Quite."_

_Her mouth twitched into a half smile and she glanced up at the well-known black robes and forbidding figure of her former Potions Professor._

_"Aren't you supposed to be in class?" she asked_

_"They're observing the mating rituals of Hippogriffs, with Hagrid." he sneered "Apparently the creatures only mate for three days once every five years and the entire student body will be excused by turns, in order to watch."_

_"Fascinating." she answered innocently._

_He shot her a dirty look and took the seat next to her, casually nicking one of her fries._

_This friendship had been one of the most startling consequences of her coming to work as the youngest Arithmancy teacher to ever teach at Hogwarts, five years ago. If anyone had told her during her school years that she would one day consider Severus Snape one of her closest friends, she'd have laughed in their face. Long and hard. She never would have guessed just how much she would grow to appreciate the man's sarcasm and dark humor. And being on the short list of people he respected and on the even shorter one of people he actually liked was a heady thing. The boys had almost had a coughing fit the first time she'd let it slip that they were on first name basis. Ron had actually blanched and Harry had turned the most interesting shade of crimson she'd ever seen. Men._

_"If I'd known I was going to have half a day off, I'd have scheduled a number of errands, not to mention I could have started on at least three potions last night that could have been done by noon today."_

_"I'm sure the Hippogriffs did it on purpose too, the blasted things." she said matching his tone._

_He snorted and took another fry._

_"So whose grisly demise were you so meticulously planning when I came in?" he asked casually and she shot him a sharp look. She knew he was a versed Legilimens, but she didn't think he was in the habit of reading anyone's mind uninvited anymore._

_"Oh, my, you really were, weren't you?" he said giving her an assessing look._

_She looked out her office window again, peaked she'd fallen for such a simple trick._

_"Of course not."_

_"You're an appalling liar."_

_"No, I'm not." she said with certainty._

_He'd just caught her unprepared and had the benefit of knowing her better than he had any right to._

_"Hm."_

_He poured himself a cup of coffee from her pot and got comfortable in the chair._

_"I've just spoken to Minerva and she found someone for Quidditch."_

_"Really?" she asked, curios._

_One of the measures they'd decided to take was to create a Quidditch coach post. There hadn't been one in centuries, which, if you asked Hermione, was plain stupid. Madame Hooch was just a flying instructor and up until now the team captains, along with the Heads of each House, had been entirely responsible for their teams actions. That would completely change. The Hogwarts Quidditch Program was about to undergo a serious make over._

_"Who did she get?"_

_"The lovely Miss Ginevra Weasley."_

_"What?"_

_It startled her enough to make her forget caution for a second and her face must have shown something, because Severus's smile became knowing. She quickly looked away and cleared her throat self consciously._

_"I thought... I thought she was in Wales playing for the Harpies."_

_"She was."_

_"Oh."_

_Eloquence, thy name is Hermione. She bit her bottom lip and valiantly tried not thinking about what it would be like to have Ginny living in the castle for at least a year. Ginny wearing leather gear. Ginny with wind blown hair, flushed from exertion, that shit eating grin spreading on her lips, riding brooms all day. Hermione groaned inwardly. Ginny with her easy laugh and her impeccable boyfriends and her pureblood family who might be liberals when it came to blood but still held traditional views on almost everything else including, but not limited to gender roles and sexuality._

_Ginny whom she hadn't seen in almost two years. Ginny whom she'd shared a room with at the Burrow countless times during the war, desperately trying to keep her eyes to herself, horrified by what her friend would think if she knew the way Hermione's eyes were drawn to her slim waist and long legs. She hadn't even been willing to think about what the Weasleys would have thought of her had they known and so had buried every last inappropriate thought and every last bit of longing so deep inside herself most days she could almost pretend it wasn't even there. Almost. And then she'd thrown herself so fiercely into fighting and war that she'd been truly surprised to have survived at all._

_Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. Why did life feel this sadistic need to smack her across the head every time she thought she'd found some measure of stability? What in the world could she have done so badly in previous lives to deserve this?_

_"My God, aren't you a well of revelations today." Severus said cocking his head in her direction._

_"Oh, do shut up."_

_"Hmm..." he hummed "So in light of my unexpected free morning and your obvious need for distraction, I was wondering if you'd like to assist me with two of those potions I mentioned. They're for the infirmary and with another set of hands I could just finish them today and free up my weekend completely. "_

_Having Severus Snape casually ask assistance in potions was on the list of top ten things Hermione felt proud to have accomplished in her life. It really was._

_"This free weekend you're looking so forward to wouldn't have anything to do with Harry's house warming party, would it?"_

_"I'm certain I've no idea what you're on about, Granger."_

_Hermione laughed delightedly._

_"What was it you said you did during the war? **Spy** , was it?" _

_"Ha.ha."_

_She laughed some more, finished her coffee and grabbed a scone for the road._

_"Alright, let's go get high on making potions. What exactly **are** we making?"_

_"Calming Draught and Skele-gro, and there will be no getting high on anything in my lab, Miss Granger." he deadpanned._

_"That's Professor Granger to you." she answered cheekily._

The stone tabletop of the Potions classroom was cold to the touch and her hand was splayed on it. She took a deep breath as her eyes adjusted to the glaring light and discreetly looked around herself to see if anyone was looking her way. This was fast becoming a habit.

She relaxed when she saw that everyone was busy with their potions and that Slughorn was at his desk, writing something down. She started automatically chopping ingredients and promptly felt her eyes fill with tears. She felt like someone had taken a knife and buried it deep into a spot she didn’t even know was tender. 

The world she had seen this time had been so alike her own, it was disconcerting. She felt the woman she had been there closer to herself than any one of the one’s she’d seen so far and it was… it was a little heartbreaking, she had to admit. In the most unexpected of ways, too. She’d seen what it could have been like had she not been the Seer, which was confusing all on its own because she'd thought all her past lives she'd been a Seer. Hadn't Crooks said that her soul had a contract? So was this some other kind of vision? But of what? From when? They had won a war, but what war was it? Death Eaters had been involved, but that wasn't really conclusive. It could have been a completely different conflict from the one she knew about, with entirely other players. She had no way of truly knowing. 

What she did know was that she'd been happy. She felt her throat constrict and knew that was the reason this had been so painful to come back from. She'd been happy there. Worried and angry, but beneath those, there had been an undeniable current of true happiness and contentment that she'd never experienced before. Ever. She’d gotten a glimpse of a possible happily ever after where she was just an Arithmancy teacher and had survived the war relatively intact and had friends and was crushing on Ginny Weasley of all people and... Hermione wanted it… she wanted it and she longed for it and she craved it so badly, she could sob. Oh, fuck, she actually was sobbing. 

She quickly put the knife down and pretended to look for something in her bag on the floor, while she blew her nose and concentrated on breathing and getting the tears to just freaking stop already. Stop it, Hermione! There's absolutely nothing you can do about it, so just suck it up and just... get a fucking grip.

If she wanted a happily ever after, she was just going to have to make one! So what if she was stuck in this timeline where the war had barely even started and the possibility of winning it was slim to nonexistent? The point was that there **was** a possibility. There was **always** a possibility! So what if she was the bloody Seer and Snape looked at her like she was something stuck to the bottom of his shoe? She would make it work. There really was no other way, so she just needed to stop feeling sorry for herself and just do something about it. Seeing how it might have felt to banter with him, to actually be admired and respected and held dear for who she was... she could admit to herself that she wanted that. He was smart and he was brilliant, powerful and talented, but also so, so very abrasive and unforgiving, arrogant, sarcastic and closed off from people. To have such a man admire you and respect you was a heady feeling. She'd never thought she might actually have even a slither of a chance to prove she was worth something in his eyes, not because she doubted her intellect, but because she'd thought he was entirely too prejudiced to acknowledge it. But she'd seen it could be done, now. She didn't know how or why, but there was a world out there where Severus Snape was her best fucking friend and if she'd done it once, she would bloody well do it a second time.  

Oh, she had no doubt that he would hate what she was planning on telling him. He was an extremely private man. Finding out he was The Guardian to her Seer was going to go about as smoothly as a bag of potatoes down a rocky hill. She could guess at how he would feel, because she knew how she had felt when she’d found out. Put on the spot. Without alternatives. Forced into something. And he would hate it. He might even hate her, which hurt surprisingly deep. But things were what they were and none of this was her fault. They would work with what they had. 

 


	18. Blue Neighborhood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the chapter title IS from Troye Sivan's album. I find it fitting. Also, I adore Troye. So... yeah.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> WARNINGS: There will be some pretty strong homophobia and some internalized homophobia in this chapter and also Ron bashing... Uhm... Sorry about that. It just sort of happened? I plan to make him see reason sometime in the distant future, but don't hold your breath for it.

She arrived in the Chamber of Secrets later that evening exhausted and enveloped in a thick layer of cold resolve. It wasn’t comfortable and her balance was so fragile she felt it could be knocked down with a feather. But things were what they were. She would be fine. She imagined that if she kept telling herself that often enough, it would start making an actual difference.

When she took a good look at the boys she wished she'd skipped the whole thing and just took a nap. Harry looked nervous and on edge, which was never a comforting combination and Ron was chewing his nails again. Shit.

"What's up?" she asked eyeing the both of them.

They gave each other a look and by silent agreement Harry spoke.

"We just wanted to talk to you a bit." he said forcing a tense smile.

Hermione grimaced.

"Well, that sounds ominous."

"No, no!" Harry said, quick to reassure. "We're just a little concerned, that's all."

"Yes!" Ron piped in. “Just a little...”

"Concerned about what?"

"It's just that you've been acting a little strange lately and we don't know what to make of it or how to help." Harry took the reigns again.

Damn it. She should've seen this coming.

"I'm fine, guys."

"Look 'Mione, we know you always feel like you need to be the strong one and you think you have to do everything yourself, but you really don't have to. We can help." Ron said, earnestly.

"Even if it's just to listen and be here for you..." Harry went on. "We love you and we want you to know that you can tell us absolutely anything and it won't change our opinion of you."

“Right!” Ron agreed.

Hermione felt like the air had been knocked out of her a little bit. Did they know? Harry was muggle raised, but Ron was from an old wizarding family. He certainly knew what a Seer was. Could they have spotted signs? Had there _been_ signs? Had she been more transparent then she'd thought? She didn't know if she was ready for this talk. She hadn't even spoken to Snape yet! Then again… shouldn’t her best friends and only remaining chosen family be the first to know anyway? Wouldn’t that be more fair?

And if she wasn’t able to tell the two people she was closest to in the entire world about this, what chance did she have telling this to Snape?

She sat down heavily in one the chairs and the boys seemed to take it as some sort of sign.

"I don't know if I can..." she forced out.

"I know you think we’re oblivious and, frankly, most of the time we probably are. But we’ve noticed you've been absent minded and depressed. There was the time you started screaming out of nowhere in the middle of lunch. And you’re having panic attacks again. You sometimes get this... this look on your face... And you're even more paranoid than usual..." Harry listed.

"It's not paranoia when they really _are_ out to get you." she snapped, feeling naked under the scrutiny.

"I know." Harry answered. "Look, we can do it like this. I also have something really personal and difficult to tell you both and... might as well do it now... We can do it together. That way there’s less pressure. You tell us what's going on and I tell you what I have to say and then we can talk about it… Oh, fuck, I can’t believe I’m actually doing this…" he said, burying his face in his hands.

Ron looked thrown off guard. He obviously hadn’t known Harry was planning on making a confession of his own. But Hermione had to admit she was now incredibly curious. What could Harry want to share that they didn’t already know?

"No reaction until the both of us have said their piece. Alright? Just like ripping a band-aid."

“Ripping a what?” asked Ron, looking more and more confused by the minute.

“Nevermind. Just… We’ll make it quick as painless as possible.” answered Harry.

Hermione could sort of feel the walls closing in on her and she concentrated on her breathing to calm herself down. Was she really going to tell them? They did deserve to know first, didn't they?

"Ok..." she said.

Oh, fuck.

"Ok. You go first. We won't say anything, right Ron?"

"Right." Ron nodded.

Hermione braced herself for whatever was to come. She took a few breaths and felt lightheaded.

"I'm... I'm the new Seer."

She almost sobbed with relief. There! She's fucking said it out loud.

Ron's jaw dropped instantly and his eyes almost bulged out of his head.

"Ok… I'm..." Harry looked at her and then at Ron and then down at the ground again "... I think, I’m pretty positive that is, that I… that I’m… I’m… fuck… I’m gay…".

"Oh..." Hermione said, putting a hand to her heart in relief. “Oh, thank God… I thought you were going to tell us you’re dying or something.” she told him, squeezing his hand. Wow, Crooks had had it right.

"Wait, what?" Ron said, jumping out of his chair liked he'd been burned.

Harry looked at him and winced.

"Sorry...?" he whispered.

"Harry." Hermione told him earnestly "There's nothing to apologize for."

"Nothing to apologize for?!" Ron almost yelled, as he started pacing back and forth. "Merlin’s saggy balls, Harry! I knew those muggles treated you like hell, but I never thought they would do…. _this_ to you…"

Oh, no...

“ _Do_ to me...?” Harry asked confused.

“Listen, Harry.” Ron said with his fist held tight in front of him. “You have to fight this. You can’t let these thoughts get a hold of you. Just stop, while you still can. It’s sick. And wrong. And you need to stop.”

Dammit, she hated being right...

"Ronald!" Hermione snapped, furious. She should have seen this coming. Actually she had seen this coming. Which is why she’d never spoken a word to Ron or his family about her sexuality. Because she’d been to their house and sat at their meals and spent enough time with both them and Ron to know that traditional wizarding values and non-traditional sexual orientations did not mix. Apparently though, Harry had either not seen it, or had decided he wanted to take a stand anyway. Which she could certainly admire, except it was going to make his life even harder when this got out. And boy, would it get out. A good friend Ronald Weasley may be, but he couldn’t keep a secret to save his life. And she didn’t think he was particularly keen on keeping this one anyway.

Harry, in the meantime looked like his world was crumbling around him. She decided to at least try to salvage what she could.

"Ron, take that back." Hermione said firmly. "I know you're shocked, but that is no excuse for those kinds of words. If you must know, I’m bisexual and find all genders attractive and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that."

“What?!” Ron yelled, grabbing his hair in both fists. He face was so red, he looked like he was about to pop a vein. She felt a little sorry for him. For about a second. But then she remembered what it was like to be a woman, a muggleborn _and_ queer and she got over it.

“What are you talking about? Are you both insane? Oh, wait! Is this a joke? Oh, my God...” Ron said collapsing to the floor and almost laughing “That’s it, isn’t it? Oh, ha bloody ha! Very funny. I keep telling you guys to stop making fun of me like this... Merlin, my heart’s going to give out one of these days…”

Harmione shared a miserable look with Harry. He had tears in his eyes and God fucking dammit… she felt like hugging him and rocking him and telling him everything was going to be ok.

“This isn’t a joke, Ron. We wouldn’t joke about something like this. Please be a little more considerate about what you want to say to us, because you are really treading on thin ice here.” she said.

"Look, Hemione. You're a muggleborn and I know you have some strange ideas about certain things because of that, but wizards and witches just don't do that kind of thing. It's wrong and it's sick and I can’t even begin to explain how inappropriate this discussion is."

She felt sick.

“Talking about sexual preferences with your closest friends isn’t inappropriate, Ron.”

“Of course it bloody well is! I know you think some of the older wizarding customs and traditions are complete bollocks, but civilized wizards and witches just don’t talk about this sort of thing, Hermione!”

Of course they didn’t. Which was a major part of the problem to begin with.

“So your parents have never had an open discussion about sex with you?”

“Of course not!”

“Well, there you have it.”

“What? There I have what?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course I do! I read the book, just like any other well raised wizard and witch in the world!”

“The book? What book?”

“The Book, Hermione! The one about sex that everyone got in third year! You don’t have to have any sort of awkward conversation with your parents, my God, that is revolting! Do Muggles actually do that? Ugh...”

Hermione made a huge effort not to punch him in the teeth, she really did.

“A lot of muggles are just as prejudiced and narrow minded as wizarding folk, Ron. Never fret, when it comes to ignorance and hate, humans are pretty much all the same, magic notwithstanding. But if by “The Book” you’re referring to that sexist, homophobic piece of utter trash that I burned after reading the first page of? Well... If that’s your only point of reference, then I’m really not surprised...”

“Stop trying to make it sound more complicated than it is, Hermione!” Ron yelled over her words. “There’s nothing complicated about it! It’s sick. And it’s wrong. It’s completely against wizarding traditions and customs and you both need to stop! Can’t you see you’re making a huge mistake? I’m just trying to help you both...” he pleaded.

God, he was so convinced about what he was saying it was literally making Hermione sick to the stomach.

"Stop?" Harry whispered. He had his arms crossed and he was hunched in his chair like he wanted to make himself as small as possible.

"Yes! Mate, you just have to ignore thoughts like that and do your best to forget about what the muggles taught you."

"Ronald, that is not how sexual identity works. It's not something someone teaches you." Hermione tried, but she could feel it was useless.

"All I know is you can’t be like that." He said going completely red in the face. "Wizards aren't like that, Harry. It's a muggle sickness of the head and you have to do your best to just forget anything those people told you. You just can't think like that! We share a room. A Quidditch locker room, for Merlin's sake!"

Harry looked so stricken and Hermione felt like her heart had just been ripped out of her and stepped on.

"That's enough, Ronald." she said, voice wavering.

Ron took a deep breath but continued to pace.

"And you, you're the Seer? Are you sure?" he asked looking at her.

"Yes." she answered softly.

"What does that mean?" Harry asked, almost like an afterthought.

"It's like Divination without the cards and a lot more accurate apparently. It's still new. I.... I get visions sometimes." she told him.

"Visions of what?"

"The past, the future, alternate Universes..."

"Who's your Guardian?" Ron asked, speaking over her.

She shot him a look of annoyance.

"Snape."

"What?!" Ron yelled, for the second time that evening.

Hermione was getting tired of it.

"Snape??!!! Are you insane? He's a bastard and a slime ball, but more importantly Hermione, he's a dark fucking wizard! He was probably a Deatheater!"

"I know that, Ronald." she snapped.

She'd just about had enough of her friend's prejudices.

"You're his soulmate..." Ron went on, going green around the edges. "You're bonded to him. That means you're just like him, deep down. No wonder you never want to hang out with us and you're always with your nose buried inside a book. It’s not that you’re studious, is it? You’re just power hungry… I’ve heard stories of dark Seers… Worse than the dark wizards, because they had The Gift and could know everything about a person and use all of their weaknesses against them...”

"Ronald Weasley, that's the biggest load of horse shit I've ever fucking heard. And what happened to we love you and nothing you say will change our opinion of you?"

"We thought you'd been attacked during the Summer. We thought you were traumatized! I didn't think you were bonded to Severus fucking Snape!" he billowed.

"Ron, it’s not something I chose!”

God, he was supposed to be one of her two bets friends! How could he speak to her like this? To them. How had they not seen this part of him until now? She felt so betrayed and heartbroken and helpless against such an onslaught of hateful words, her eyes filled with tears.

"How could you not tell us?! He tried to kill Harry! More than once! And you're bonded to him, are you fucking kidding me??!!"

Hermione didn't even register how her wand got into her hand and she didn't know she was going to cast until she heard the word out of her mouth.

"Obliviate." she said, through the tears coming down her cheeks.

Ron instantly went silent and still, a vacant look in his eyes.

"Fuck! I'm sorry..." she sobbed into her hand, looking at Harry, who had stood up. He was looking at Ron with this broken look and she just...

"I'm so sorry..." she kept sobbing and once the tears started coming, Hermione didn't seem to be able to stop them.

"Finish the spell, Hermione." Harry said hoarsely.

She spoke words she didn’t really register, telling Ron that they had talked to her and she had told them nothing was wrong, that she was alright, just a bit tired and stressed about the war. Then she sent him to dinner. He walked out of the chamber like a puppet.

She turned to Harry and was drawn into a fierce hug. They stood there, in each other’s arms, pretending they weren’t both crying their hearts out. Harry transfigured one of the chairs into a couch and they both collapsed into it. Hermione curled herself into his side and he drew her against his body.

"There is nothing wrong with being gay." she whispered after a long while. "You do know that, right?"

"Isn't there?"

She pulled her head away from his shoulder to look him in the eyes.

"I know your relatives are awful and keep you isolated from the world. And I know the wizarding world is very old fashioned, bigoted and prejudiced, Harry. But I'm bisexual and my parents have known for years and they've been very supportive. Muggles have come a long way in human rights in the last thirty years and it's going to get better in the wizarding world as well, for queer people."

Harry was looking at her with a quiet sort of desperation.

"Trust me, there is nothing wrong with you, Harry."

At this he broke into tears again and she held him this time, rocking him gently.

"I love you and there is nothing wrong with you." she repeated.

His sobs were wretched and Hermione couldn't even imagine how long he'd been struggling with those feelings and how frightened he must have been. She kissed the top of his head and felt such a strong surge of protectiveness for him.

"We'll get Ron to come around, you'll see. We just have to broach the subject with a little more forethought. Maybe have a few general discussions about sexuality with him beforehand. Just to prepare the ground. It's not that he hates us, it's just that he's frightened and ignorant and a product of his upbringing."

Harry was starting to calm down and he was nodding against her neck.

"I'll put together some reading materials for you." she said against his hair and she felt him snort.

"Of course you will." he said drawing away from her arms and blowing his nose in a tissue.

"Everything's going to be alright. No matter what Ron says, queer people have been a part of every society from the beginning of time, Harry. Wizards, muggles, whites, blacks, Asians. Even when they don't have the courage to come out because of persecution, they still exist."

“Alright.” he said.

They just sat there for a long time, each with their own thoughts until Harry broke the silence.

“So explain this Seer business to me properly.”

 


	19. The planning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am completely disregarding canon when it comes to Hermione's birthday and Snape's age.:))) He is thirty four in this fic and Hermione's birthday is October 26th. 
> 
>  
> 
> Ok, enjooooooy! 
> 
> XOXO
> 
> ps - Disregard any errors you might encounter. I wrote this in the spurr of the moment and wanted to share it as is. I'll go over it again tomorrow to see if anything needs fixing.
> 
> Love youuuuuu!

Explaining everything to Harry took a huge load off Hermione’s shoulders. She hadn’t realized how alone and isolated she’d felt in the past weeks. He took everything in stride and nothing in his behavior towards her changed at all in the following days. She was so grateful, half the time she didn’t even know what to do with herself. Ron’s reaction to both subjects had planted a huge thorn in her heart and it had shaken her. Harry seemed to be struggling with how he now viewed his relationship with his best friend as well and it was pretty heartbreaking to watch. Hermione was determined to fix the problem somehow, but it would unfortunately have to wait because she had bigger things to worry about.

The first one was what to do about Snape. Having Harry’s support gave her the confidence boost she needed to actually consider it seriously. She had three weeks left until her birthday. She was getting perilously close and Crooks was giving her desperate looks every time he came to her.

She decided she didn’t want to do it in his office. It was his territory and it made her feel like a student confessing to some misdemeanor. It would have to happen on neutral grounds, somewhere she could feel confident and would be able to approach the subject as his equal. Because, no matter her age, Hermione was not about to step into the most important relationship of her life as anything but an equal partner. Snape was a man, more than likely raised on the same _traditional values_ Ron spewed. He was also smart, almost twice her age and had known her as his student for half her life. If she wasn’t careful he could, at best, relegate her to a role of protégé and promptly take command of the entire situation, _to protect her_. At worst, he would just assume he was in charge without even considering another alternative and make decisions without even consulting her. She wasn’t about to have any of it. She spent a day looking into wizarding magical contracts and made a draft she would present to him. They would discuss it and move on from there.

All of this, of course, in the unlikely case that he wasn’t completely appalled and disgusted by the supposed status of her blood. Which could very well be the case, considering the glimpse she’d gotten into his past. He had seriously considered being a Deatheater at her age and had been on a very firm road to taking The Mark. People and opinions changed, it was true, but it wasn’t something one could reliably count on. She could be bonded to a blood status radical who thought her existence was an abomination, for all she knew. Combined with his temperament, she really didn’t want to consider his possible reaction and subsequent behavior. It gave her cold chills just thinking about it.

In any case, school grounds were out of the question, as was any public part of wizarding Britain. She could just see the headlines, would the two of them be seen together having a chat. That left only one convenient place to meet: muggle Edinburgh. It was the closest city big enough to grant them some anonymity. Plus she’d been there on a number of occasions with her parents and she was familiar with it.

She forged a letter from her mother, asking for another weekend with the family. Her father was feeling ill and he wanted to see his daughter and spend some time with her to celebrate her birthday. Dumbledore answered the next day with what she now recognized as being an automated response letter.

And so it was done. Just like that. She’d searched a few less than respectable bookshops in Knockturn the last time she was there and she’d found quite a number of books on forgery. And once she’d actually done it and gotten away with it, a lot of the fear had abated to a manageable amount. She’d been surprised to feel almost no guilt about breaking the law. Apparently, the more one did it, the less frightening and wrong it seemed. There was no point loosing sleep about it. And there was of course the fact that she wasn’t doing anything she considered truly vile or questionable. Just bending a few laws here and there. She had a feeling that’s how criminals always started and that she might be heading down a slippery road, but she didn’t have the time or inclination to pursue the thought. She had discovered in the past months that she was a lot more ruthless than she’d ever given herself credit for. Seeing as she didn’t see any better alternative, that was neither here nor there.

The next letter she wrote was to Snape. She was extremely careful with both the writing and the spells on this one. The Headmaster might get letters from parents every day that he didn’t bother to check, but Snape was a lot more suspicious and a lot less friendly.

Since the Potions Master would in no way agree to a private meeting with a student outside of school, she wrote a letter in the name of Helena Cortinsham’s parents. She was a muggleborn as well, but she was a Ravenclaw. Hermione had swapped class notes with her numerous times and she knew a few things about her and her parents. Just enough to make the letter sound genuine. She asked Snape for a meeting concerning an apprenticeship in Potions, which were coming up in a few months. The parents, being muggles, would like to know more about what it entailed, but they courteously asked him not to reveal the meeting to Helena. They wanted to surprise her with an opportunity.

Hermione realized the risks she was taking by approaching him like this. Snape might not ever get these kinds of letters. It might look incredibly suspicious. Her wording might be off. He might have ways of determining whether the letter was genuine. The variables were numerous and she was aware he might smell foul play. But this had been the simplest and best solution she had come up with. If it didn’t work, she had two more back up plans and, should push come to shove, she would just talk to him in his office. But she hoped she wouldn’t have to.

He took longer than Dumbledore to answer, and she could tell he had written the letter himself. He agreed, to her surprise. He didn’t come across as anything close to enthusiastic, but he was polite to a fault and didn’t sound aggressive or sarcastic in the least. She read the letter five times.

She sent back a reply with the address of a nice cafe she knew, where she thought they might be able to have a quiet conversation. And just like that, she had a weekend off and a meeting scheduled with her Potions Professor slash soulmate. It had all been rather ridiculously easy.

The next item on her agenda was, shockingly enough, shopping. And since there was no possible way to leave school until her scheduled weekend, online shopping it would have to be. She needed something to wear to this meeting that made her look mature, sophisticated and confident. It couldn’t in any way resemble her school uniform, the last thing she needed was to remind him of their current relationship, but she also didn’t want it to be blatantly obvious that she was trying.

She settled on a crisp white shirt, gray pencil skirt and a bold, silver, statement necklace. She deliberated over shoes for a ridiculously long time. She was tempted to buy stilettos, but she’d never worn high heels before, not to mention they were a bit out there. She might look like she was trying too hard to appear like a woman. She didn’t want to be that obvious. She finally settled on a pair of low healed ankle boots.

She had everything sent to a muggle friend in London. Linda and her had been friends all throughout school before Hermione had come to Hogwarts and she’d kept in touch with her over holiday breaks. Hermione would collect the clothes on Saturday, change at Linda’s and them Portkey to Edinburg. It was tight, but she’d have to make it work.

All the planning and worrying took so much of her head space that before she knew it it was Friday and she was having a small panic attack in the Chamber. Harry was with her. They had started meeting there without Ron more often than not. It was depressing and she knew Harry was as adamant as herself to not talk about it.

“Fuck, what if he hates me?” she groaned into her hands.

“He’s not going to hate you. At least, not more than he already does.”

“Gee, thanks Harry.”

“You know what I mean. He knows you. You know him. It’s going to be fine.”

“Do we though? Know each other? Do we really? Honestly, if you think about it, apart from the blatantly obvious, what do we really know about Snape, Harry? About what kind of man he is. What's he like, what does he do when he’s not our teacher? Who the hell is he, Harry?”

“You make it sound like you want to date him.”

“Oh, do I?! Because I don’t, not really, I’m just going to have to either spend the rest of my life _bonded_ to the man or go into a permanent, soulless coma. I’m sorry, you’re right, what am I even worrying about?”

“Uhm… well… when you put it that way...”

“Do you even know what being bonded to someone means?” she asked, getting more and more agitated.

“Well, no, but I have a feeling you’re going to...”

“It’s like marriage, times _a thousand_ because it’s fucking _permanent_ and it involves souls. _Souls_ , Harry! Souls and bodies and yes, it doesn’t really have to be anything sexual, but it sure as hell isn’t just two people casually living together!”

“Hermione...”

“And imagine if one part of this duo happens to hate everything the other part is to their very core! Imagine…. Imagine what being bonded to Draco bloody Malfoy would be like!”

“What?” Harry said, blanching.

“Yes. Draco Malfoy, with all his fucking prejudice and his “filthy Mudblood” comments and his blood purity crap!”

“He doesn’t really...”

“Imagine being forced to spend your whole life bound to all that hatred and ignorance and, and… ugh! Can you even imagine?”

“I….”

“I know you hate him and it seems ludicrous, I know… That’s precisely my point!”

“I don’t really...”

“And Malfoy isn’t even an adult yet! He’s still _somewhat_ malleable. But Snape is thirty fucking four, Harry! His beliefs, whatever they are, are good and bloody formed. Do you have any idea how difficult it would be to get someone who has believed all of this crap for so long, to change their tune completely? Practically none! If he's a radical, I'm screwed. He could make my life hell."

“You don’t really know what his beliefs are yet, though.”

“I know...” she said, deflating a bit. “It’s just so bloody frightening...”

“I know...” Harry answered, sighing. “I know it is...”

Because the truth was, no matter how much she planned and how brave she was, it  _was_ frightening and Hermione had no idea how in the world she was going to go about doing what she had to do the next day. All she knew was that she had to, because the alternative was to basically lay down and die a slow, horrible death and she didn’t plan on doing _that_ any time soon.


	20. Breaking Point

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so I just realized I completely forgot about the damn underage Trace. :))))) Too late, now! So, for the record, The Trace gets lifted and young wizards learn to Apparate at sixteen. Like driving in the US. Ok? Ok! That's settled. Also, omg, we finally have Severus joining! Yay! It didn't take me 35k to even introduce the man to the plot or anything, hahahaha! Well, sort of. He did make appearances before. Anyway.  
> I want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart, this story just reached 200 kudos! Guuuuys! Do you have any idea how proud I am so many of you read and like my writing? Thank you so much for your support, it means the world! I love you!
> 
> Alright, on to the story, now!  
> As always, I hope you enjoy, don't forget to leave a comment if you have any feedback and I will talk to you next chapter!  
> Cheers!
> 
>    
> WARNING: - GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF SELF-HARM AND SUICIDE ATTEMPT - Uhm... yeah. I don't know how it happened, I hadn't planned this in the least, I swear. It's the part written in italics. So... If you find it triggering or disturbing, please don't hesitate to skip it. I love you guys the most. Stay safe.

_It was ridiculous how the human mind worked. Or rather stopped working, as the case may be… Ludicrous, really. So many years of careful control, so much time spent trying to manage his emotions and now this. The rational part of him was having trouble coming to terms. The rest of him though… The rest of him was broken. In disarray. Scattered and shattered and so, so pathetically weak… He never thought he would ever end up like this. Yet here he was._

_There had been a raid. There were always raids these past weeks, since he’d given the Dark Lord the Prophesy it was like the man had gone completely insane. Severus had been required to attend. The Dark Lord had wanted him there and Dumbledore had wanted him there and, as usual, his own opinion or preference hadn’t even come up for discussion. The Headmaster wanted to know what was going on and The Dark Lord… he simply wanted Severus to enjoy some Saturday night casual slaughter of innocents. Or rather… traitors._

_The Deatheaters had raided the house of a Muggleborn witch and her Halfblood husband. Blood traitors. They had been made an example of. They’d had… they’d had a nine year old daughter..._

_Severus had no idea how he’d made it back inside the castle. He knew he’d spoken and been spoken to, he knew he’d done a convincing job of it because he was still alive and breathing, but the exact memory of it was simply not there. The Headmaster could bloody well choke on it. Severus had no idea what it had been about this particular night that had broken him. Maybe it was the screams, maybe it was the blood, even though he’d witnessed plenty of both before. Or maybe it was the little girl. Severus supposed there was only so much violence someone could witness before finally going round the bend. Or finally deciding enough was enough. Depended how you wanted to look at it. Either way, Severus was pretty certain he’d reached the point._

_He made a conscious effort to turn off the tap before water started sloshing over the rim of the bathtub. He didn’t even remember getting undressed or climbing in and he didn’t give a shit anymore either. He was so sick of trying to do things and failing. He was sick of his thoughts and he was sick of the people around him, he was sick of his classes and of his students, The Headmaster and The Deatheaters and The Dark fucking Lord and he was just so... fucking sick of it all. He just wanted to sit back and just… breathe for a bit. Thus the bath. He'd put a slow acting soporific agent in it, he could smell it. After endless minutes of painful sobbing and uncontrollable shaking, he'd probably deemed it necessary._

_The scalpel sat quietly in the edge of the tub. He'd been contemplating it for the past five minutes straight. He could have gone with a poison, but a blade had something primal and decisive about it that appealed to him. It was a lot more painful as well and Severus didn't believe he deserved to die without pain. As a matter of fact, if he could think of a way to make himself suffer even more, he would... it was just that elaborate thought process seemed to elude him at the moment._

_It wasn't that he wanted to die precisely. He didn't think he did... He was just so tired of everything... All the endless struggle and all the pain and all the guilt... So much guilt he felt it would literally drown him in his sleep some nights. And nothing helped. The more he ached, the more he hated everything, the more the pain deepened... He'd gotten to a point where he simply had no idea why he was even alive anymore. So why bother?_

_The blade felt cool and secure in his hands, even with them shaking like leaves in the wind. He'd spelled it to cut deep and true and he'd put an anticoagulant on the blade as well. He remembered that part quite well. He wanted to take as little chances as possible._

_The first cut he didn't even feel. The scalpel was very sharp. Blood flowed into the hot water around him, staining everything it touched. It was thinner than he remembered blood being. The second cut was a lot more difficult. His left hand refused to cooperate. He might have hit a tendon. It made the second cut less like a precise slash and more like a jagged carving. He was beyond caring though. Once it was done he let the scalpel fall out of his hand and just... relaxed into the water. There… It was fucking done. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he felt a sense of peace and a slither of hope. That he’d finally managed to do at least one thing right. The insides of his forearms felt like fire, but fire was good. Fire was pure. His arms were on fire and the fire would spread and it would consume him completely. He could hardly wait. Just a few more moments and everything would be over and he would finally be free. He allowed himself to close his eyes and drift off with the help of the potion in the water. It was surprisingly easy to just... let go…_

Hermione came back with a start and slapped a hand over her mouth. She was in her bed, with the curtains drawn. She felt the tell tale signs of the two way silencing charm she'd begun erecting around her bed at night. She was safe.

"Fuck!" she gasped.

Her hands flew to her forearms even though she knew there was nothing to see there. Her skin was smooth and unharmed, but the feeling of the knife cutting deep into her flesh was so fresh and strong she started rubbing her forearms uncontrollably.

“Fuck, fuck, Jesus fucking Christ!”

Oh, bloody fucking hell… Snape had tried to kill himself. But had it been the Snape from this timeline or from somewhere else? So many details fit and her gut was telling her it had been from this one. But she couldn't be sure. Could she? He'd slashed his wrists with a scalpel in the bathtub, right here at Hogwarts. It made Hermione's chest ache and her throat constrict. She threw her covers away, suddenly claustrophobic under them and knelt on her bed with her head hanging between her shoulders. Just trying to breathe through the gasps.

“God fucking damn it, Snape...”

The desperation of it... The self hatred... The all encompassing guilt... It was... Hermione had no words for it. No one deserved to feel that way.

The problem was, she understood the head space he’d been in better than she wanted to think about. Hermione had never gotten as far as actually doing something about it, her parents had gotten her professional help way before that could happen. But she'd had thoughts. Of doing something similar. Ending it all. She'd toyed with the idea. So she knew the insidiousness of that way of thinking. Of those feelings. That bone deep depression that felt like being swallowed by a cold river and dragged to the bottom. The utter despair. The never ending terror.

Snape hadn't had anyone to help him. It was obvious. He had been so immersed in guilt and pain and suffering and hatred. He'd loathed himself. Maybe he still did. She couldn't imagine what living for years with such vicious clinical depression did to a person. And that without even taking into account the crippling PTSD he must be suffering from. Suddenly his calm and knowledge in the face of her panic attack made a lot more sense.

Hermione wondered who had found him. She wondered if he'd been taken to the hospital or if Madame Pomfrey had healed him. She wondered if he'd gotten help afterwards. If the Headmaster had cared enough to suggest it, or to demand it even. Judging by Snape’s thoughts, Dumbledore seemed to care a lot more about his usefulness as a spy than about his mental health. It made Hermione’s blood boil with rage. And if he hadn’t had the Headmaster on his side, Hermione fervently hoped he’d at least had someone. A friend, a colleague. Maybe a lover. She hoped he'd had someone smart enough and invested enough to help him seek counseling. And if he hadn’t, he sure as hell did now. Even if he didn’t know it yet.

She cast a quick Tempus and saw that it was four thirty am. Bloody fucking fantastic. She enlarged the silencing charm to encompass her wardrobe and took out her bathrobe and a change of clothes. She took a luxurious shower, washed her hair and applied the best drying charm she knew. It took fifteen minutes and she normally didn’t bother with it, but it left her hair as frizz free as possible. By the time she was done, it was six thirty and she could go grab breakfast. She was alone in the Great Hall, as she knew she would be, but she’d brought a book and, as she ate, more people started coming in. After about an hour of lounging and enjoying her coffee, the boys made an appearance and promptly went into a Quidditch discussion. Because, of fucking course. Every Saturday morning with a game, which was almost all of them, it was impossible to get them to talk about anything else. By seven thirty she was thoroughly disgusted with the both of them and went to gather her things. She was scheduled to Flew from The Headmaster’s office at eight.

She’d done a marvelous job of not thinking about _it_ the entire morning. But once she was out of the school and walking the streets of Muggle London, the anxiety came back full force. The questions and fears were all the same and no matter how much she kept telling herself everything was going to work out, the fear was always there, firmly planted in the middle of her chest. She had to stop twice and concentrate on her breathing. The air had become too thin and the damn oxygen seemed to have vanished again.

She reached her friend’s house and called her. Linda came to unlock the front door and gave her such a big and wonderful hug, it warmed Hermione to her toes.

“Hermione! Honey, are you alright? You look a little white...”

“Uhm… yeah… just anxiety...”

“For the interview?”

She’d told her friend she had an interview for an internship.

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re going to do just great, you’ll see. Everyone loves you, Herms.”

Hermione laughed half-heartedly.

“I don’t know about that… This bloke who’s interviewing me looks really intimidating.”

“Well, we’ll just make sure you look and feel even more so, then. Come on, I can’t wait to see what you bought!”

XXXX

  


Turned out what she’d bought coupled with Linda’s make-up made her look almost unrecognizable. Or, well… not really unrecognizable. She still looked like herself… but better.

She’d stared at herself in the mirror for a full five minutes before leaving the house. It wasn’t anything drastic, really, just some concealer, bit of foundation, blush, mascara and a burgundy lipstick, but it really transformed the look.

It was ten thirty. The meeting was schedule for eleven. She took the Portkey to Ebinburgh and then Apparated to a secluded alley near the cafe. She Disillusioned herself and scouted the area for the best place to observe the entrance. She was going to wait for Snape to sit down and then she would make her entrance. She leaned against the wall of the shop across the street and waited.

Eleven o’clock came and went and there was no sight of Snape. She waited for half an hour before finally accepting that he wasn’t going to show up. Well, shit. The man was usually reliable about keeping his meetings. Or at least he was when it came to detensions. Which, she realized, were her only point of reference. God damn it. She walked back to the alley she’d Apparated to and was about to go back to London, when she felt the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end. She ducked on instinct and the spell hit the wall where her chest would have been. Grateful that she hadn’t lost the Disillusionment, she rolled to the side and came up on a knee, facing her attacker. The stunning spell left her wand a second later, yet it was a second too late. Snape cast a quick shield and then, fast as a whip, shot a series of offensive spells that Hermione tried to block as best she could. The third one was too strong and too fast and it knocked her into the wall, shattering her shield. Before she could gather her wits, strong ropes circled her arms and torso and she couldn’t move. Her wand had landed somewhere near the wall, but it wouldn’t have made a difference if she’d had it anyway. She was completely paralyzed. She saw the tip of his boots approach and felt a hand on her shoulder before the dizziness of Apparition took her away.

When they arrived, Hermione decided that being Side-Along-ed while completely immobilized was right at top of the most unpleasant ways to travel she could think of. She was dizzy, nauseated, her head felt like it was about to explode and she couldn’t move a single muscle in her body. She was still on the floor, only this time it was a different floor. It was wood, dirty and slightly damp. It was disgusting. The only other thing visible to her was a blank wall about a meter away from her face.

She felt a hand on her scalp and her head was pulled back by her hair. Snape was looking at her dispassionately, while holding a glass vial.

“I’m going to terminate the immobilization so I can give you this potion. You will drink it. If you refuse, I will find other, much more unpleasant ways to administer it. Do I make myself clear?”

She had no way to convey her answer, she couldn’t even move her eyelids, which she was certain he knew. In another moment, however, she felt her body come back to life, still bound by the ropes. He’d used neither wand nor word and Hermione couldn’t help but swoon a little at the show of power. Until his grip on her hair made her eyes water. And then she just wanted to spit in his face and kick him in the balls. The fucking bastard.

“If you’re about to poison me, I swear to God...” she ground out.

Not even a muscle moved on his face.

“Open your mouth.” he said coldly.

She did as she was told, hoping to God these weren’t her last seconds of life. The potion tasted vile and she gagged, but she didn’t start convulsing or spitting blood, so that was a plus. The potion tasted familiar and she started identifying the components she thought he’d used.

They waited for the effect in strained silence, but nothing happened. It was definitely something in the Revelatio spectrum, the smell of the Horn of Bicorn was unmistakable and body transformations was it’s main use in Potions.

“This is a bit anticlimactic, I have to admit.” Hermione said.

Her back was screaming, her legs had fallen asleep and he was _still_ holding her upright by her bloody hair, the fucking caveman!

Something happened to his features then, but it was too fast for her to tell what. A second later she was levitated to a chair and as the silence stretched between them, she noticed a pulsing vein on his forehead. She moved her tongue along her teeth in thought. There was a spicy aftertaste that she could swear was from Elacampane, which encouraged tissues regeneration and was often used as a tonic. Hmm...

“Miss Granger, of all the idiotic, asinine bloody things to be doing on a Saturday morning, I believe this one must be the stupidest, most imbecilic one I’ve ever witnessed from a student! What in the name of Merlin’s fucking balls, _are you doing_???!!!!”

Wow, he’d almost properly foamed at the mouth right there. A revealing potion with tissue regenerating properties and … did she detect a hint of Autumn Crocus or was it Eldelflower… both of those could be used to boost cellular growth and they also had anti-inflammatory properties...

“Oh, you’re joking...” she said, awed. “Did you really develop a Polyjuice reversal potion?”

Snape gave her a sharp look and clenched his jaw even tighter.

“No, really, that’s it, isn’t it? What you just gave me. Oh, my God, I’ve never even heard of anyone attempting anything like it since they first did all of those tests on Polyjuice two centuries ago in Catalonia. It’s notoriously stable and resistant to any counter potions...”

“Miss Granger.”

“Did you get it to work then? You did, didn’t you? You wouldn’t have been so confident it would work on me otherwise...”

“Miss Granger!

Hermione rolled her eyes but tried to refrain her enthusiasm. Alright, so maybe this wasn’t _precisely_ the right time. But to think that… No, no, she had to stop it. She shook her head and took a deep breath.

“Right, sorry.” she said matter of fact. “You were saying?”

Snape massaged the bridge of his nose and then raked a hand through his hair in a distracted manner. It was such an oddly endearing gesture, Hermione’s breath caught.

“I’d like to know the meaning of all this idiocy, if you please.”

His tone had gone from slightly hysterical to cold and tight and it made Hermione’s insides do a bit of a flip-flop. It reminded her of how dangerous he could be and how she was still very much tied to a chair. She had no idea why on earth she wasn’t in the least bit frightened.


	21. Utter drivel

Hermione’s thoughts whirled a mile a minute. They were in a bare room, where the only furniture was the chair she was in. The floorboards were gray with dirt and decay and the walls that had once been white were now almost entirely covered in mildew and grime. There were no windows. The door must have either been at her back, or was masked. Snape was looming in front of her, menace and fury enveloped in an expensive looking, pristine Muggle suit. He looked younger, taller and more refined. Or maybe that was just the Muggle in her peeking through. She’d always appreciated a man who could wear a suit well.

Meanwhile, her outfit was ruined. The skirt was caked in mud on the side she’d fallen to the ground on. Her shirt was dirty and had become untucked. She’d lost two buttons right beneath her ribs, where the ropes had bitten the worst into her flesh and her navel was showing. She didn’t even want to know the state of her hair. So much for making a good impression.

Somewhere, somehow, Snape had smelled a trap. Maybe it was the letter, maybe he’d spotted her outside the cafe, it didn’t really matter anymore. He’d thought she was someone else under Polyjuice, and had attacked. But even after making certain she was indeed herself, he still hadn’t released the ropes. So he obviously didn’t trust her.

“I wanted to speak with you.” she said at last, keeping her tone even.

The silence that followed was tense and filled with unspoken vitriol. He was so obviously furious. She reminded herself that this was her soul mate. He wasn’t a means to an end. He was the very point of this entire endeavor. His trust was paramount. So she decided she would approach him and this situation with complete honesty and openness, despite the rocky start. The decision made something settle inside her.

“You wanted to speak with me. Has it escaped your fuzzy, little brain that we reside inside the same castle? Literally see each other every single day? Why couldn’t you speak with me at Hogwarts?”

“I… it doesn’t matter anymore. The point is that we’re here. Could you, please, end the Incarcerous? It’s a little disconcerting having this conversation whilst tied to a chair.”

He raised an eyebrow and made a furious swish with his wand, ending the spell. She took a few seconds to breathe, settle her clothes a bit and gather her thoughts.

“Thank you.”

“Speak.” he bit out.

“Alright...” she hesitated. She couldn’t think of any other way of addressing the matter than just coming right out and saying it. All the careful monologues she had rehearsed so many times in her head were completely lost to her now. She couldn’t remember a single word.

He was silent. Not even a muscle moved on him.

“I am the new Seer.”

More silence, punctuated by a look of incredulity.

“The Seer. The Reader of the Records. The Link Between the Planes. _The_ Seer.” she went on.

“That’s preposterous.” Snape deadpanned.

“I assure you... it is the truth.”

“Miss Granger, you have chosen a lie so outlandish and easy to disprove, it’s embarrassing.”

“Disprove ahead.” she replied.

He gave her a hard look and cast the revealing spell. It seemed that, outside the classroom, Severus Snape was a man of few words. Or maybe she’d just gotten used to being inside his head, where thoughts flowed almost as fast as her own. Like always, the spell flared violet all around Hermione. Snape stared at her for what felt like minutes, until the flare disappeared into thin air. He cast the spell again and then another two Hermione was familiar with herself, having tried them as well. All of them revealed the same thing.

Snape didn’t say anything for a long while and Hermione granted him the time to chew on the revelation.

“Congratulations.” he spoke at last, without any inflection. “Why, may I ask, did you feel the need to share this information with me, of all people?”

And here they came to the crux of the matter.

“You are my Guardian.” she said simply.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“They sometimes call you The Keeper of the Chord, in books.”

“They don’t call _me_ anything, as I am not, nor have I ever been anyone’s Guardian!”

“It refers to the fact that your magical core keeps my soul tethered to this plane while I travel through time and space.”

“Miss Granger, I never thought I would say this, but I am disappointed in you. I thought you were smarter than this.”

Hermione did her best to not let his words get to her. She knew it seemed impossible to believe. Practically _any_ other explanation would make more sense than the truth. She knew this.

“This is the most ludicrous and frankly one of the worst pranks I have ever seen, and believe me, I’ve seen some rather pathetic ones over the years. Not to mention… I deeply dislike being the butt of jokes.” he ground out, coming closer to her chair and leaning in.

It put his face inches from her own and it was probably meant to be menacing. But she’d been studying this man for months now. She’d seen him or versions of him in highly intimate and vulnerable circumstances. She could never look at him and see just one of her Professors anymore. But she did look.

He was angry. Furious, really. And beneath it, Hermione could see the hurt in his eyes. So, so many layers of anger and hurt... and fear. She didn’t know when she’d started being so good at this. She couldn’t remember ever being this empathetic before. It was probably related to The Gift, of course. So many things were, lately. Nevertheless, she’d become a lot more attuned to people’s emotions in general. And Snape’s, in particular, it seemed.

His skin was so fair, the veins at his temple and on the side of his jaw showed blue. His facial hair was all black and his eyes were a deep chocolate color. The shadows under them were stark against all that white. She wondered if he had Indian blood in there somewhere. It wouldn’t surprise her. His lips were a little on the thin side, but his mouth was wide and when it wasn’t pressed into a thin line, like now, it had the potential for the broadest of smiles. She had yet to see one on his face and she’d known the man for years.

She raised her eyes to his again.

“You may be the new Seer, but do not think this grants you an excuse to break the rules governing the school you attend or the laws in this country.” he bit out.

He was so sensitive to injustice. He’d been hurt by it so many times, it was written all over his face.

“Are you aware that forging letters and signatures is, in fact, a crime?”

“Yes.” she told him.

“And what, pray tell, was going through your vapid head, while you were doing just that?!”

“I told you. I needed to speak with you. I didn’t want to do it on school grounds.”

“And why not?”

“Because I am not speaking to you as your student right now.” she finally said, standing up from the chair and closing the distance between them even more. He recoiled.

“This is not about you being my teacher or I being a student and having this discussion on school grounds would have made the situation even harder to disregard. Severus, you are my Guardian.”

There, she’d managed it. She hadn’t been certain she’d have the balls to pull that line off, but his name rolled off her tongue a lot easier than she thought it would. Snape, for his part, blanched.

“Miss Granger, I do not grant you permission to address me so informally.”

“Yes. But I’m going to do it anyway. Tell me, do you know what being the Guardian means?”

It was a legitimate question. The last known Seer had died a hundred and fifty years before and Hermione didn’t know how much people actually knew about it and how much was just legend and hear say.

“Miss Granger, we will not discuss anything further without the Headmaster present. Now, take my arm so I can Apparate us back to Hogsmeade.”

“This isn’t something I remotely want to discuss with anyone else present, least of all the Headmaster.”

“Be that as it may…”

“Please, answer the question.”

“Miss Granger.”

“Do you know what being the Guardian means?”

“For the last time, I am not your bloody Guardian.” he snapped.

“How do you know?” she asked, incensed.

“Because it’s a preposterous notion.”

“And since when is something preposterous automatically not real? Since when do you accept opinion, even your own, as undeniable proof of existence?”

His jaw tensed but he was unable to give her an answer quickly enough and she took advantage of his pause.

“I know this is going to sound cliché and believe me, I have struggled with it more than you could possibly imagine. But I am the Seer. And I have seen things. I know things about you and one of them is that you are my Guardian.”

“Excuse the language, but you know shit all, Granger.”

“I know your parents abandoned you in Berlin when you were seven.” she said, the first thing to pop into her mind.

His fingers twitched by his side.

“They packed your bags and had your butler, Jarris, take you to Germany. It was the last time you ever saw them. You mother was wearing a blue dress. Your father’s desk had a dragon engraving on the front. You thought Berlin was the name of one of the nearby villages.”

He turned his face away from her and looked at the wall.

“They died in a car crash. Your mother was nine months pregnant. Your sister’s name would have been Lilly.”

His breath wheezed out of him in a hiss and his hands clenched into fists. Hermione took a step closer to him.

“When you found out, you went to the Forbidden Forest and fucked Lucius Malfoy against a tree.”

His head snapped to her and he was so shocked, he just gaped. She took advantage and caught his left hand in hers, coming even closer. He tried prying it back but she took hold of it with both hands and put her thumb inside his sleeve, on the inside of his forearm. She felt nothing but clean skin.

“This is where you made the first cut.” she said hoarsely.

“Stop.” he whispered, snapping his hand back and moving away from her, face to the opposite wall.

“You took the Dark Mark and regretted it ever since. You hate them and you hate yourself and it almost broke you, what they made you do. You resent Dumbledore for not allowing you to get out, for forcing you to spy for him.”

“Granger, I said stop.”

“Do you know what being the Guardian means?” she asked again, like nothing had happened.

His breath was labored and he still had his back to her. It took the longest time, but he finally answered.

“It means, I suppose, the person is somehow considered responsible for your security.”

“It means you are my soul-mate.”

His back became ram rod straight and he gave a derisive snort.

“Soul mates? You expect me to believe in myths and legends, just because of some random facts you seem to have gathered about me?”

“You know perfectly well that what I told you isn’t something I could have found out by asking people questions about you.”

“You could have stolen some memories.”

“I could have, although I think you’re giving me a bit too much credit in the crime department. I would have to know what to steal and from whom for one thing, not to mention some of the things I know I could only have gathered from some of the most powerful wizards alive. No, what I know I know through the… gift.” she said, grimacing a little.

“That does not prove to me, however, this insane notion you have of me being your soul mate. Or what that even means.”

“No. You’ll just have to take my word for it on that one.”

“Your word means nothing to me.”

Ouch.

“I don’t really think that’s true. But even if it is, it still doesn’t change the truth.”

“Your truth, perhaps.” he sighed.

“Yes. When I become seventeen, in two weeks, I will come into my full powers as a Seer. I will need you to be there.”

“Why?”

“The transition will take a toll on my mind. Your magical core will ground me, as I understand it. Without you, my mind may very well break under the strain of the new powers.”

“And how, pray tell, do you know this?”

“It was… revealed to me.”

God, she sounded like a fucking oracle.

"How concenient." He answered. "Take my arm,  Miss Granger. We're leaving." 

“One more thing.” she said. “I will need you to not speak of this to the Headmaster, or anyone else, please.”

“You have no right to demand any such thing. I will speak with anyone I wish, about anything I wish.”

“Yes. But I am trusting you that you won’t. Please. I will not force you into anything. But I will trust you.”

“You’re a fool.”

“Maybe from your perspective.”

“Indeed.”

With that she grabbed hold of his arm and he Apparated them at Hogwarts’ gates.

“Go on inside.” he told her, handing her back her wand.

She left him there, looking towards the forest, starting the walk towards Hogsmead.

 

 


	22. Out of the fire...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone and Happy New Year! I hope you're all doing well!  
> It took me forever to update this story, I know, but I really hope you enjoy this chapter and manage to forgive me for my prolonged absence. Life has been very busy, but I will say it again, no matter how long between uploads, I will not abandon this. 
> 
> Also: I've made a few changes to the last chapter. Just changed and added a bit more dialogue, so if you want, you can go ahead and check that out first.
> 
> XOXO
> 
> WARNING - GRAPHIC VIOLENCE ahead. Proceed with caution.

_Draco had never been particularly brave. Not that bravery had been an encouraged trait in the Malfoy household, but it was nonetheless something a young, Pureblooded wizard heir was expected to posses in an adequate measure. Draco was well aware of his many deficiencies when it came to how adequate of an heir he was. Or of a Pureblood. Or of a wizard, really. His father had made quite sure it was crystal clear to him. And as he stared at the shiny surface of the desk beneath his cheek, he was grimly reminded of the fact._

_Oh, he was smart, resilient and ruthless sometimes, yes. But brave... He'd seen what people meant by it, of course. With his own eyes, several times. Yet he could never replicate that strong, imposing confidence in the face of danger that garnered the respect and awe of the masses. That "Come what may, live or die, I will stand my ground" energy that seemed to surround "brave" people? He didn't think he had it in him, really. He **did** care whether he lived or died. He cared very much actually and he couldn't imagine simply disregarding the crippling fear and panic and just... doing what had to be done. Did that make him a coward? Did it make him weak? Probably. But as another cold shiver raced down his back in the frigid air of his cell, he couldn't find the energy to be ashamed about it. _

_The waiting was the worst. His parents had both been sentenced to Azkaban the day before. He didn't know how he felt about it but something in his chest definitely hurt whenever he tried taking a deep breath. So he'd resolved not to think about it for now. There was nothing he could do about it anyway and after the third time waking up sweat drenched from dreams of his mother being beaten and raped in a dark cell, he'd resolved to stay awake as well. His trial was supposed to have taken place the day before as well. But an NGO had come forward claiming rights for the Death Eaters' children caught in the war. Pathway to Peace they called themselves. Draco knew them through his mother's charity work. They handled human right's issues from fair treatment of magical creatures, to children's rights, to women and gay rights. His father had always sneered at them, considering them entirely too liberal for his tastes, but he'd have sooner spit on the floor in the middle of a gala than do something as gauche as meddling with a lady's charity work. It just wasn't done in polite society. The irony of having them speak for his son's rights didn't escape Draco._

_The group had raised signatures, petitions, requested to be heard before the Wizengamot, gave numerous interviews to all the major papers and had generally made it impossible for the Ministry to treat the whole matter in the quick, quiet way they'd probably hoped for. Dark Lord or not, the Purebloods took care of their own._

_Pathway to Peace had made the case that most of the teens involved in the war were still minors and should be tried accordingly. That there were hundreds of them and it made no sense to further destroy so many futures, to cripple yet another generation after the last two had seen so much violence and two wars already. That the vast majority of them had been pressured by family and had no idea what they were getting themselves into. That it was time to remember kindness and forgiveness and that society finally had a chance to start healing. How could that begin with the imprisonment of children?_

_It was a good case, he had to admit. It might have sounded even better had Draco not been the one standing trial. People might have been in a more forgiving frame of mind. But Draco was a high profile case. Not exactly a child anymore at seventeen, either and he'd taken The Mark. The prosecutors were furious, the judges had sneered and Draco had been thrown in a small cell, awaiting a decision, by an overly enthusiastic guard who'd conveniently forgotten to take off his hand cuffs. They'd been put on too tight in the first place and they cut into his skin but he hadn't dared complain. After more than twenty six hours in them his wrists felt like a swollen, bloody mess, his shoulders were so stiff he could barely feel them anymore and the pain had become a throbbing, living thing. He'd seen other prisoners along the halls and their hands had been tied in the front with the Incarcerous spell, which had the benefit of no chaffing. Obviously, he didn't rate the humane treatment._

_He'd tried calling for someone, but there had been no answer. His bladder was about to explode even though he couldn't remember the last time he'd been offered water. Food seemed like a distant dream, but he consoled himself thinking that even had they brought him any, he probably wouldn't have been able to stomach it._

_When they finally came for him, he thought he might cry from the relief, but they just pulled him up by his upper arm, making his wounds scream in protest and his knees buckle under him. That earned him a cuff over the back of the head that sent him sprawling on the floor. Falling on your face with your hands tied behind your back isn't the best of experiences. His knees and his forehead took the brunt of it and he felt even dizzier than before._

_"Watch where you're fucking going!" the guard snarled at him, somehow managing to knee him in the gut while pulling him to his feet and cuffing him over the head again. Draco coughed and dry heaved but somehow managed not to give into the waves of nausea and sick up on the floor as well. They dragged him down hallway after hallway, and Draco was so disoriented and winded that all his concentration went into putting one foot in front of the other so as not to fall again. They shoved him into an interrogation room and left._

_He stood there for a couple of minutes getting his bearings and then sank into one of the chairs. He lay his head on the cool surface of the metal table and groaned. It was the only position that provided a small relief for his arms. He knew they were trying to intimidate and humiliate him, of course. He just couldn't understand why they bothered. He was wandless, bound, starved, in pain, dizzy with exhaustion, scared and utterly alone. He had nothing and no one anymore and he was at the complete mercy of people who couldn't wait to lock him up somewhere far away and throw away the key. He was as intimidated and humiliated as he was going to get short of all out torture or death._

_Another unfathomable stretch of time passed and his lids had become heavy when the door was thrown open violently and he jumped so hard he bit the inside of his cheek._

_A large, stocky man came inside and threw a stack of papers on the table in front of him. Draco winced, startled. He did his best not to look at the papers with as much apprehension as he felt, but he didn't think he was doing a very good job. The man was dressed in Auror robes and had piercing black eyes, filled with hatred, disgust and an assessing coldness. Draco swallowed. He knew that look. He'd seen it plenty of times on Death Eater faces when regarding Mudblood or blood traitor prisoners and it never boded well. Of course, as intimidation went, the Aurors had nothing on The Dark Lord. No matter how much hatred this one spewed at him it wouldn't touch the complete, utter terror born from the psychotic, cold, calculating look He could pierce you with. Still._

_"So you're the little shit who's too good to stand regular trial."_

_It wasn't a question._

_Draco kept his eyes fixed on the desk in front of him. He figured the less he said, the better it was for him._

_The Auror lazily opened the file._

_"Draco Lucius Malfoy, 17, marked Death Eater from a family of marked Death Eaters. Father participated in both wars, both times on Voldermort's side. Part of the Inner Circle, suspected connection to Albus Dumbledor's murder, suspected accessory to breaking and entering, accessory to assault, kidnapping, torture and murder of at least 57 Muggleborns."_

_Draco had been well aware that the Death Eaters were bringing prisoners into the Manor and torturing them. It would've been difficult not to notice considering the screams. He'd never known exactly how many there had been, though. Before now. He swallowed back bile and felt himself start to shake._

_"Some of the victims we were able to identify by the remains, of others there was nothing left but the magical signature imprinted in the your Manor wards."_

_Draco had the impulse to tell the Auror that when the Dark Lord requisitions your house for the war effort, it doesn't really qualify as your Manor anymore. As a matter of fact, by taking the Dark Mark, you renounce not only all your worldly possessions to Him, but also your family, your wand and your life. Draco had a feeling now was not the time to educate the Ministry's Auror Department on exactly what it meant to be a Death Eater, from a family of Death Eaters._

_The Auror started throwing pictures on the desk between them. Bloody, gruesome, terrible pictures of limbs and people and parts of people. Draco closed his eyes against the onslaught. He'd been so careful not to go anywhere near the dungeons for the entire year Voldermort had taken possession of their house specifically so he could avoid this kind of spectacle. It had been futile, of course, to think the Death Eaters would confine themselves to that part of the house. By the time He fell, the only safe area for Draco to wonder had been the attic._

_"LOOK AT THEM!" the Auror suddenly screamed_

_It startled Draco into opening his eyes and looking fearfully at the man in front of him. His eyes were bloodshot, he had dark circles under his eyes and he looked like he hadn't shaved in days._

_"What's the matter?" the man went on in a quiet, vicious voice "Aren't you proud of your work? Or do you not enjoy the sight of abuse unless it's accompanied by screams and pleading?"_

_Looking into the Auror's eyes, Draco tried to remember why he'd felt relieved that being captured by the side of the Light meant the worst he could look forward to was a life sentence in prison or a quick death._

_"Oh, but I forget. You're a minor. Legally. You've been so obviously coerced." he said, sarcasm and hate dripping from his every word._

_"You know who else was a minor?" he went on conversationally, getting up from the desk and pushing a photo toward Draco of a dark haired, blue eyed teen grinning and waving at the camera "Kalinda Kudrow. She was 14. We found her in one of your parlors, suspended naked from the ceiling upside down, drained of blood by hundred's of cuts all over her body. It took hours for her to die. There was also evidence of multiple rape, both vaginal and anal. Do you know what that means, Mr. Malfoy?"_

_Draco was shaking so hard by now his teeth were clattering and knew he wouldn't be able to utter a single word. The most he could do was clench his jaw so he wouldn't throw up all over the desk._

_"I said do you know what it means or are you such an innocent, fucking MINOR that you have no idea what I'm talking about?!" the Auror screamed in his ear from inches away._

_"Y...Yes...?" Draco stammered_

_"Yes, I suspect you do indeed, Mr. Malfoy." the Auror ground out darkly "A fucking minor... You weren't a minor when you took The Mark, were you, you little piece of disgusting shit?" The Auror grabbed a fist full of Draco's hair, pushing his head towards the pictures on the table hard enough for Draco's vision to blur. "I said were you!" The Auror yelled in his ear._

_"No?" Draco whispered.  
_

_"I didn't think so." the Auror spat viciously and slammed his head against the table. Draco heard a crunch and felt pain exploding over the right side of his face, raw and fresh and cutting. His nose was probably broken and one of his eyes wouldn't open properly. They'd made him take The Mark on his seventeenth birthday right at midnight. Almost exactly two months ago. It had felt like being branded with a hot poker. He'd screamed and screamed and everyone had laughed and told him he was a man now. He'd felt like cattle.  
_

_"Fucking murderous, inbred pieces of shit..." The Auror muttered taking a seat across from him and leafing through some of the papers._

_Draco kept his head down and tried to breathe through his mouth. He felt blood dripping down his chin and saw it fall all over his trousers._

_"You need to sign this." The Auror told him placing a paper in front of him_

_"What is it?" Draco asked automatically. His eyes were stinging, his head was throbbing and he couldn't see anything but long, indecipherable lines of script._

_"Your release papers."_

_"My... what?" Draco asked, uncertainty and suspicion fighting to take control of his heart. Why would they do that? Would they really do that?_

_"Into the care of your family. You are a minor after all." The Auror drawled, a malicious grin spreading on his face and Draco felt the bottom of his stomach drop. Whatever this was, he didn't think he had any reason to be glad for it._

_"My family?"_

_Draco had no family anymore. Not anyone near close enough to be called family at any rate. He couldn't imagine who might be willing to take him in._

_"A cousin of your mother's thrice removed. They live in Australia."_

_Draco's mind tried working, he'd been expected to have knowledge of his entire family tree after all, but try as he might he couldn't recall ever having heard of relatives who'd moved to Australia._

_The Auror got up, came around the table and yanked him up. Draco shouted in pain but he had no time to really process it as he was unceremoniously bent over the desk in front of him. He started truly panicking now and made a move to turn around, to protect himself somehow, to do something!_

_"Stop moving around!" The Auror snapped, grabbing his hair and slamming his face into the desk again. Draco saw stars. "I need to get the cuffs off you, you fucking twat."_

_Draco relaxed and couldn't help the whimper that escaped as his hands were finally released. Moving them was almost as painful as having them bound at this point. Merlin, it hurt!_

_A quill was slammed in front of his face._

_"Sign the papers, I don't have all day. Unless, of course, you'd like to go back to your cell. That can certainly be arranged."_

_The Auror's voice was all ice and cold fury and Draco knew, he just knew this wasn't going to end well, but he didn't see what options he had. His fingers were trembling uncontrollably, but the official papers would recognize his magical signature even with the unreadable scribble he managed and it would be enough. The papers disappeared into thin air, to be duplicated and processed._

_Another parchment and a quill appeared in front of his face and hovered there._

_"All your property and vaults have been requisitioned by the Ministry." The Auror said in a monotone bored voice and the quill started scribbling the words on the parchment. "You can petition for a wand after a six months probation period. Your current one has been destroyed. A form will be provided for you by the Ministry of Magic in Australia. In the meantime you are not allowed to perform any sort of magic, even if you find yourself with a wand at your disposal. If you are caught using magic, the remainder of you probation period will be served in the Prison of Azkaban. You are to be released into the care of your family, who will be responsible for you and your actions until you turn eighteen, at which point you will be considered an adult and have rights accordingly. Is all of this clear?"_

_"Yes." Draco croaked_

_The quill recorded his answer._

_"Do you testify that you have been offered free legal council as required by law nr. 90-230/1938 and that you understand all charges brought against you by the United Kingdom Ministry of Magic?"_

_Draco looked at the man incredulously and was met with a cold, threatening stare and the sight of the Auror's wand tapping rhythmically against the table. Draco swallowed dryly._

_"Y.. yes...?"_

_"Do you testify that the proceedings have been respected to the best of your knowledge and that you have been treated in conformity to the international rules and regulations regarding prisoners?" The Auror gave him a pointed look and Draco swallowed the sarcastic snort threatening to come out._

_"Yes."_

_"Do you testify that you have suffered no ill treatment and have not been a victim of violence or discrimination on grounds of race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status during your detainment in this facility?"_

_Draco ground his teeth and swallowed his humiliation._

_"Yes." he whispered_

_"Sign it."_

_He signed the paper in front of him and it promptly disappeared into the system._

_Without another word, the Auror grabbed his arm, yanked him out of the chair and took him out into the hallway. The walk was brief and Draco was shoved through a door, into yet another room. There was a rack to his left filled with rows upon rows of Portkeys and a circular cement platform in the middle. The Auror picked a Portkey and stepped unto the platform with Draco in tow._

_The whirlwind of Portkey travel was slightly nauseous at the best of times, but in Draco's condition... His knees gave out from under him and he gagged and coughed on the cold, wet pavement at their destination. When a large boot connected with his abdomen he let out a loud grunt and felt like his insides were about to burst through his mouth._

_"That was for my wife, you slimy, disgusting piece of shit." The Auror told him in a cold voice. Draco had no idea what he was talking about. "My beautiful... clever... amazing wife..." Each word was followed by a kick and Draco lost control of his bladder at some point, but the pain in his ribs and his stomach and his abdomen was so severe, he barely registered it. The Auror grabbed his hair again and yanked him off the ground at an awkward angle, stepping on his hand at the same time. Draco screamed._

_The punch to the face was unexpected after all the kicking but hurt just as much, if in a different way. Draco had lost count of all the places he ached by now and all he could do was pray to be left alone for only a minute so he could just... breathe. Breathing took a lot of effort._

_"Listen to me you piece of shit, as far as the wizarding world and the UK Ministry of Magic care, you are out of the country and no longer the system's responsibility. You could crawl under a rock and die and no one would give a flying fuck. As a matter of fact no one would even know about it. Do you understand?"_

_Draco understood. It was hilariously ironic that he would die like this after everything he'd been through but he didn't have it in him to laugh just that second._

_"Tell me, how does it feel to know you're all alone, you slimy, murderous shit? That no one would even know to look for you? That you're at the mercy of your worst nightmare, you fucking scum? How does it fucking feel?!"_

_Another kick and Draco coughed violently, spitting blood. What he thought was that being beaten to death by an Auror was nowhere near his worst nightmare after the year he'd just had and the things he'd seen, but he had no voice to speak._

_The next kick caught him in the chest and the one after that in the groin and that voice he hadn't had a minute ago made itself heard after all in a gurgling, agonized scream and Draco saw black. He came back to another kick in the side and wondered, hazily, just how much abuse a body could possible take before it would just... die already. Surely this couldn't go on much longer... He dry heaved and coughed and cried and tried crawling away, the agony so all encompassing he couldn't remember where he was or how he'd gotten here or who it was that was beating him to a pulp, all he knew was PAIN. It was all his brain could process at the moment. Pain._

_When the kick to the side of his head came and finally turned everything black, Draco didn't even have time to feel relieved._

Hermione gasped and stumbled back from the desk, disoriented and frightened.

“Hermione?” she heard Harry’s voice, but her eyes were blurry and she couldn’t stop shaking and she knocked down the chair next to her in an attempt to turn around.

“Miss Granger.” she heard again before strong arms caught her frantic stumbling and she was so relieved to hear Snape’s voice, she could cry. Oh, wait, she _was_ crying. “Come with me.” he said “Everyone, get back to your work, **now**.”

He guided her to a door at the back of the classroom and she did her best to follow, but she was still shaking so violently, she could barely walk.

"Fuck." She whispered with feeling, wiping uselessly at her eyes and sobbing uncontrollably. "Fuck, fuck, **_fuck_ ** everything to fucking hell and back!"

Harry was there in seconds and he closed the door behind the three of them.

"Are you alright?"

“Mr. Potter!” Snape barked.

“Forget it, I’m not going anywhere.” Harry said in a stubborn tone. "Hermione, here sit down. You're ok, everything's alright." he said to her, hugging her head to his chest and petting her hair. 

She clutched at him gratefully and started sobbing even harder. Oh, God... She didn't even know why she was crying. For Draco, for herself, for the entire brutal experience and the relief of being alive and not dead in a gutter somewhere. She shuddered and clutched even harder at Harry. 

"Move, Potter, let me, you're doing it wrong. Miss Granger, look at me. That's right, now take my hands. Good. Now look up for me, yes, just look at the ceiling and tell me you phone number."

"Wh... wha...?" she choked, looking back at him in bewilderment.

"You must have a phone number, what is it? Keep looking up."

"It's... it's 44799875615." she said, looking at the ceiling. It was vaulted and there were shelves all the way to the top.

"Good. Take nice deep breaths for me. Do you know where The National Gallery in London is?"

"It's... in Trafalgar Square." she answered, breathing more deeply.

"What did you have for lunch today?"

"Uhm... I... I had broccoli soup and, and a lentil salad." she answered. She realized she wasn't choking on sobs anymore and squeezed his hands in gratitude.

"That sounds delicious, did you have coffee, do you drink coffee?"

"Yes, I did and... I do."

"How do you take it?"

"With... almond milk and sugar."

"Potter, get a glass of water."

Harry handed Snape the glass and he helped her drink without spilling everything. Her hands were still shaking like leaves in a storm, but her breathing had calmed and she could finally think straight.

"Fuck..." she said when she finally managed to hold her glass without help. "Sorry..." she muttered, looking sheepishly at Snape. All the Professors had a strict no swearing policy.

God, but it that had been brutal... Would this be her life from now on? Was she destined to forever live through random people's trauma? She was going to go insane in a year! 

"They're not random." Crooks said from next to Snape. "You are connecting to people and events you have business with."

She just raised her eyebrows at him, since she couldn't well ask him what he meant with both men next to her.

"You only see things that are important to your actions somehow. That you can do something about, so to speak."

"Oh..." she whispered absentmindedly.

Snape looked at the spot where Crooks was and then back at her. Shit. She had to be more careful.

“We need to save Draco.” she told the both of them, to prevent Snape from asking her who she'd been talking to.

“What? Save Draco from what? Is he in some kind of danger? And since when do you call Malfoy, Draco?” Harry asked, bewildered.

“Indeed.” Snape drowled.

“Nevermind that.” she said. “He’s getting dragged into this war on the wrong side. He’s frightened and he's unwilling, but he doesn’t believe he has any choice. We need to present him with one.”

“Alright...” Harry said, carefully, stealing glances at Snape. Well, that had been easier than she'd thought it would be.

“I know you hate him...” she began haltingly.

“I don’t hate him.” Harry answered. “I’ve never really hated him.”

“Well, whatever you call it then. I understand this might be against your first impulse, but Malfoy doesn’t really want to be a Death Eater, Harry.”

“I know...”

“You... you do?” she said, momentarily stunned.

“Yeah, we’ve… sort of been talking about stuff.”

“Oh. Right. Ok. Well... Good, then. We need to find a way to properly get him on our side. Officially. Severus might be able to help?” she asked, looking at him with the best puppy eyes she could muster.

At the mention of his name, a deep scowl formed on his forehead and he got up from where he was kneeling in front of her.

“Stop calling me that.”

“It’s your name.”

“Yes. The one you’re not allowed to use.”

“Hmm.” she hummed, taking another swig from her water.

Harry looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

“Right. Well, if you’re alright now I’m gonna… get back to my potion.” he said before turning around and going back to class. It was a bit hilarious, Hermione thought.

“So, what just happened?” Snape, no, Severus asked. If she was going to call him by his name to his face, she was damn well going to do it in her thoughts as well. 

“I had a vision.”

“Of?”

“Of something rather unpleasant that I don’t really want to talk about?”

“Involving Mr Malfoy.”

“Yes. Him, some Aurors and possible events after the end of the war.”

“I see...” Snape said, his face clouding over.

“It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, exactly. It’s just... very fresh and…” she shuddered, recalling everything that had happened. “… it was rather painful and scary.”

“You feel pain during the visions?”

“I feel everything.” she said tiredly. “Sometimes I’m in my own body, sometimes in someone else’s. I feel and think everything they feel and think. It's like I'm that person. I have no recollection of being someone else. And everything feels... completely real. It's not a dream like state..."

“And you were in Draco’s body this time?”

“Yes…”

“What happened?”

She sighed. The man really didn’t seem to grasp the concept of I don’t want to talk about it.

“He was beaten to death by corrupt Aurors.”

It sounded so simple when she said it out loud like that. So sterile and contained and far from the rawness and pain and violence that she had experienced. And this had been the happy outcome. The one in which they won. The one in which they defeated Voldemort somehow. For the first time she realized that even if they won, and things went according to plan, there would still be innocent victims that would suffer and loose loved ones and die and some of them might very well be Death Eaters. Because the side of the Light wasn’t as light as she’d thought it was and apparently people were cruel and violent and murderous no matter which side they were on. It was a chilling thought.

 


End file.
